
Book. 



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EEVIEW 



j^ LORD MAHON'S HISTORY 



AMKRlCAiN REVOLUTION 



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REVIEW 



3^J 



LORD MAHON'S HISTORY 



OF THE 



AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 



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FROM THE NOEin AMEEICAN REVIEW FOR JULY, 1852. 




^BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY 
1852. 



VWVVN 






Entered accordiug to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by 

Little, Brown and Company, 

111 tlic Clerk's Office of the District Conrt of the District of Massachusetts. 



riverside, Cambridge: 
printed by h. o. houghton and company. 



REVIEW. 



[History of England from the Peace of Utrecld. By Lord Mahon. Vol?. 
V. and VI. 1763-1780. London. John Murrav, 1851. pp. 500, xliii. 
501, xliii.] 

We are not going to comment on these agreeable vo- 
lumes at large. We have read them with great interest 
and enjoyment ; — not with satisfaction ; that is more 
than we can say. Lord Mahon is a better historical 
writer than either of the eminent persons who have treated 
any portion of English history between the Revolution of 
1688 and the accession of George the Third. He is a more 
reasonable, at all events a more moderate, Tory than Mr. 
Adolphus, who began at the latter era. Indeed, one chief 
merit of his book is the fair and generous spirit which 
for the most part pervades it. It is quite plain that he 
means to maintain good faith with subjects and read- 
ers, to tell the story frankly and truly, and impartially 
to award praise and blame. It is further clear that he 
has right and manly feelings, a quiet sympathy with 
whatever is honorable and amiable in character, and an 
honest antipathy for what is base. " 1 feel," he says, 
in one of his earlier volumes, " that to state any fact with- 
out sufficient authority, or to draw any character with- 
out thorough conviction, implies not merely literary fail- 
ure, but moral guilt. Of any such unfair intention I hope 
the reader may acquit me — lam sure I can acquit myself."* 
Of all such unfair intention we cordially acquit his Lord- 
ship. And because we do so, we assure ourselves of his favor- 
able reception of a few corrections which we are presently 
to make of some of his unintentional misstatements. 

Lord Mahon is not only an upright historian, but a 
writer, in the main, competent and accomplished for his 
work. If he makes no parade of philosophical disquisi- 
tion, his exhibition of events and actors is such that the 
reader easily gets at the lessons, with the added pleasure 

* Vol. i. p. 3. 



of seeming to make them his own discovery. His style is 
perspicuous and flowing. Though not distinguished by 
vigor or grace, it gets over the ground evenly, and with 
speed enough, without Gibbon's stilts, or the ground-and- 
lofty tumbling of Carlyle. It has the great merit of a 
flexibility which makes it equal to dignified narrative, 
and which, at the same time, permits the introduction, 
without abruptness or jar, of personal anecdotes and illus- 
trations of a lighter character. 

As to materials, besides those already before the pub- 
lic in print. Lord Mahon had the advantage of consult- 
ing the valuable family papers transmitted from his an- 
cestor. General Stanhope, the soldier and statesman of 
Anne and George the First ; those (still in manuscript) of 
the Yorke family, the family of Lord Chancellor Hard- 
wicke ; the manuscript Memoirs of the Duke of Grafton ; 
collections relating to the schemes and enterprises of the 
expelled dynasty, particularly the Stuart papers presented 
by the Pope to the Prince Regent after the death of 
Cardinal York ; and the Grenville papers, now in the 
possession of George Grenville's descendant, the Duke 
of Buckingham. Lord Mahon says that he had also 
opportunity "to examine the despatches to and from 
America in our State Paper Office." * That opportunity, 
we fear, he did not suitably estimate or profit by. In 
those portions of his work which relate to American 
affairs, we see no evidence of his having pushed his re- 
searches in that branch of his subject at aU beyond the 
commonest histories, nor far in them. 

To carry out his purpose of impartiality, when treating 
of the disputes between Great Britain and her colonies, 
was no easy thing for Lord Mahon, with his strong Tory 
inclinings. We have said that we have no doubt of his 
having aimed at it. We doubt as little that he has 
failed of entire success. But though we cannot help 
tracing repeatedly in his work the operation of this dis- 
turbing element, we are bound to avow our opinion that 
it is not this chiefly which has made his treatment of the 
American part of his subject an unsatisfactory one. The 
simple truth is, that, as to this important portion of his 

* Vol. vi. Ap. p. iv. 



work, — and what is therein modern history more import- 
ant than the relations between Great Britain and Ame- 
rica for the twenty years from 1763 ? — he does not appear 
to have sufficiently informed himself before he proceeded 
to write upon it. We suppose that his reading in the 
American historians does not extend beyond the works of 
Grahame, Bancroft, Gordon, and Ramsay, and that it is 
only a portion of the majority of these which has engaged 
his notice. 

We also strongly suspect that, not having had his atten- 
tion previously drawn to its importance, and learning it 
only by degrees as it forced itself upon him in the prosecu- 
tion of his work, Lord IVIahon had written up to the year 
1765 before looking with any curiosity at the history of 
the colonies ; and that he was content, as measures and 
events in England succeeded each other in his narrative, 
to acquaint himself successively and singly with the cor- 
responding ones in America. Of course, this is not the 
way to write history ; and this is not the way in which 
Lord Mahon has written the rest of his work. But, un- 
less we greatly mistake, such is the account to be given 
of the comparatively barren, fragmentary, superficial, 
lifeless character of that portion of it which most inter- 
ests us. One may make a chapter in a book of annals 
correctly without knowing any thing out of its limits. 
But history deals with sequences of cause and effect. Its 
large discourse looks before and after. How could Lord 
Mahon have written the English history of the Georges, 
as well as he has done, without being well read in the 
times of the Stuarts, the Commonwealth, and the Revo- 
lution ? How could he be expected to understand much 
better than he appears to do the men and the measures of 
Massachusetts, without knowing something of its disputes 
with the mother country as far back as under the old 
charter ? 

We think that his Lordship mentions the English 
North American colonies but once in his first three vo- 
lumes ; that is, before the peace of Aix la Chapelle in 
1748. And then he mentions them to relate the capture 
of Louisburg in just the following words, and no more. 

" The people of New England had formed a design for reduc- 
ing Louisburg, the capital of Cape Breton, a French port of 
great importance, and sometimes termed the Dunkirk of America. 



6 

The King's Government afforded its assistance to tlie enterprise. 
Early in the spring, about 4000 volunteers assembled at Boston : 
they were reinforced by a body of marines, and supported by 
Admiral Warren with a squadron of ten ships of war. For their 
commander they chose Mr. Pepperel, a private gentleman, iu 
whom courage and sagacity supplied the place of military skill. 
Landing with very slight loss at Gabarus, four miles from Louis- 
burg, they invested the place by land while the fleet blockaded 
the harbor. The walls were newly repaired and the garrison mus- 
tered 1200 men, and a resolute resistance was encountered; but, 
nevertheless, on the 15th of June, after foi'ty-nine days' siege, the 
town and the whole island were compelled to surrender to the 
British arms." Vol. iii. p. 299. 

What can it be imagined that the writer of this knew 
of the campaign against Cape Breton in 1745 ? What 
idea had he of the nature of that enterprise ? The cap- 
tm*e of Louisburg was a very extraordinary exploit, in 
its conception, in its conduct, in its consequences. It 
was one of the wildest undertakings ever projected by 
sane people. Crusaders of the twelfth century, rather 
than Yankees of the eighteenth, might be supposed to 
have devised it. Indeed, a sort of crusading fervor was 
part of its impulse. A chaplain took with him a hatchet 
which he had consecrated to a service of iconoclasm in 
the French churches ; and Whitefield furnished the legend 
for the flag of the New Hampshire troops, Nil desperan- 
dum, Christo duce. The Massachusetts people were 
vexed by the vicinity of the French at Louisburg, then a 
sort of naval guard-house for the North American conti- 
nent, like Halifax now. Louisburg, about five hundred 
miles distant from the capital of Massachusetts, was one 
of the strongest fortresses of the world, both by nature 
and art. Of a sudden, the idea was conceived of sur- 
prising it in the winter with a party of militia, and scal- 
ing its walls, over thirty feet high, with the help of the 
snow banks. The attempt was finally resolved upon in 
the Massachusetts General Court by a majority of one 
vote. As all the artillery at command was ten eighteen- 
pounders, borrowed from New York, the plan was, should 
a siege become necessary, to depend mainly on a park of 
forty-two-pounders, to be first taken from an outwork of 
the French. Col. Pepperell was not at all " chosen to the 
command " by volunteers, but regularly appointed, as 



usual, by the Governor in Council. He had " courage 
and sagacity " in abundance ; but he had had some expe- 
rience, too, with the French and Indians in Maine ; and 
as to his being deficient in " military skill," to suppose 
that is to make it all the more difficult to explain how 
Louisburg fell, which is hard enough already. It did 
fall, at all events, to the amazement of America and 
F u'ope, after six or seven weeks of siege by Pepperell's 
r ilitia, and blockade by Commodore Warren.* The 
garrison, when it capitulated, consisted of 600 regulars 
and 1200 militia men, a force half as large again as Lord 
Mahon supposes. Of the besieging force there were 
3250 Massachusetts men, exclusive of commissioned offi- 
cers, 516 of Connecticut, and 304 of New Hampshire. 
The assailants were short of powder and provisions, and 
ill provided with camp equipage. Their siege artillery 
they had taken in " the grand battery " at Louisburg, 
according to the scheme laid out at Boston. 

On the arrival in London of the Mermaid frigate with 
the news, her commander received a gratuity of five hun- 
dred guineas ; " the park and tower guns were fired, and 
a general joy and gladness," says a London newspaper, 
" was diffused through the whole kingdom. Advices were 
forthwith sent to his Majesty in Hanover, who was gra- 
ciously pleased to express the highest satisfaction 

And in further testimony how acceptable this important 
acquisition is to his Majesty, a patent has been sent from 
Hanover, creating Mr. Pepperell a baronet of Great 

Britain His Grace the Duke of Newcastle has 

in the most affectionate manner expressed the just sense 
the nation has of the service of the New England troops ; 
that it will reflect everlasting honor on their country ; and, 
happening when affairs in Europe were in so bad a situa- 
tion, it will still the more endear them to his Majesty." The 
Gentlemen's Magazine took occasion to say, " Our coun- 
trymen and kinsmen of New England are like shrubs and 
trees which increase in beauty and vigor by being trans- 
planted. They almost shame the soil of their ancestors 

* Lord Mahon says that Pepperell laaded his troops " at Gabanis." In 
the rude old map of Colonel Gridley, the provincial engineer, the well 
known Chapeau Rouge Bay is called Gabanis Bay, — we suppose, a corruption 
of the former name, the G in Gabarus being pronounced soft. 



by their stately growth." Moore's doctrine was not yet 
broached ; 

" In glorious beauty woods and fields appear ; 
Man is the only growth that dwindles here." 

The event was one of those singular ones which bafHe 
all reasonable calculation. The enterprise seemed to have 
no one element of success, but its daring. Douglas calls 
it " the very, very, very rash, but very, very, very fortu- 
nate expedition against Cape Breton ; " and says that " if 
any one circumstance had taken a wrong turn on our 
side, and if any one circumstance had not taken a wrong 
turn on the French side, the expedition must have mis- 
carried, and our forces would have returned with shame, 
and an inextricable loss to the province." * 

All this may be nothing to the purpose of Lord Ma- 
hon's " History of England." But it is to the purpose of 
that history that the capture of Louisburg was, as far as 
England was concerned, the great event of the war of the 
Imperial succession of 1741 - 1748. England had no 
other success in that war, to compare with it. It was not 
without occasion that " His Grace the Duke of Newcas- 
tle, in the most affectionate manner, expressed the just 
sense the nation had of the service of the New England 
troops ; " for that service of theirs extricated His Grace 
from infinite perplexity, and the nation from danger not 
a little. We think it would not be attaching too much 
importance to it to say, that by saving the honor of 
England, it gave peace to Europe. England, adopting 
the basis of the status ante belliwi, for the treaty of Aix 
la Chapelle, bought back from France, by the retroces- 
sion of Louisburg in 1748, the conquests which the 
more fortunate arms of her rival had been wresting from 
her on the other side of the water; — a disposition of it, 
no doubt, very much to the discontent and chagrin of the 
New England actors and sufferers, but very greatly to her 
own aid and comfort. Lord Mahon had not sufficiently 
informed himself respecting the place of that event in the 
history of England, when he wrote the little paragraph 
which we have quoted.f 

* Summary of the British Settlements, <jr., vol. i. p. 336. 

t The facts above stated are partly taken from the original "Letters relat- 
ing to the Expedition against Cape Breton," (Massaciiusetts Historical Col- 
lections, vol. i.) and partly from newspapers of the time. 



9 

Throughout his work, the noble author appears dis- 
posed to do hearty justice to Washington, whom he intro- 
duces in the following terms : 

" On the Ohio, the French surprised and sacked Blocks Town, 
a settlement of the Virginians, who, in return, sent forward Major 
George Washington at the head of 400 men, and with orders to 
attack Fort Duquesne. But this officer having advanced to 
a place called Little Meadows, found himself surrounded in a 
small fort by superior numbers, and, notwithstanding his resolute 
I'esistance, overpowered : he was compelled to capitulate, march- 
ing out, however, with military honors. This skirmish, of small 
importance, perhaps, in itself, was yet amongst the principal causes 
of the war. It is no less memorable as the first appearance in 
the pages of history of one of their brightest ornaments, — of 
that great and good man, General Washington." * Vol. iv. 
pp. 65, 66. 

But notwithstanding this good disposition, Lord Ma- 
hon's want of sufficient study of the transactions of those 
times causes him to rob Washington of part of his due. 
For instance, in describing that miserable business, the 
defeat of General Braddock,t he fails to relate that Brad- 
dock's stupid proceedings were in haughty opposition to 
the remonstrances of his Virginian aid-de-camp, and that 
the intrepidity and conduct of the latter in the action 
attracted the universal admiration of the country, were 
extolled to and by the British ministry, and in short gave 

* Here are some little mistakes. For "Blocks Town," one should read 
Logstown, (which, however, had not been taken by the French,) and for "Lit- 
tle Meadows," Great Meadows. And when Washington was " sent forward," 
it was not " with orders to attack Fort Duquesne," which was not yet in exist- 
ence, but to help in building upon its site a fort to be begun by another 
Virginia officer, who preceded liini. The unfinished work was taken by the 
French, under Contrecoeur, before Washington reached it. — Speaking of 
Washington's fiimily furtlier on, (vi. 64) Lord Mahon says, "His great 
grandfather, John Washington, had settled in Virginia about eighty years 
before, (tliat is about 1652,) and was descended from an old gentleman's family 
in England. There was a common descent between them and the Earls of 
Ferrers, whose ancient device — three mullets above two bars argent, as 
blazoned in the Herald's College, and as borne by that line of Earls, appears 
no less on the seal of the American General." But the connection of the name 
Washington with the Earldom of Ferrers, dates from as late a time as that of 
the marriage (about 1675) of Elizabeth Washington to Robert Shirley, after- 
wards Earl of Fen'ers, while the Washington arms are known to have been 
borne by the family of that name as early as 1564, and probably much earlier. 
Can any one tell us whether the stars and stripes of the American flag (of the 
origin of which we must own our ignorance) have any relation to the mullets 
and bars in the arms of the commander-in-chief 1 

t Vol. iv. pp. 68-70. 



10 

him at once a great fame. Lord Mahon does not men- 
tion Washington's name as having a place in the expe- 
dition or the battle. Nor in relating that Braddock's 
" troops sought safety in headlong flight," is he careful to 
confine this remark to the regulars, or to state that while 
they, according to the official report, " broke and ran, as 
sheep before hounds," the provincials exerted themselves 
with steady valor to cover their retreat. 

Again, in relating the capture of Fort Duquesne, in 
1758, by General Forbes, which, next to the capture of 
Quebec, (though at a long distance,) was the great event 
in breaking the French power on this continent, Lord 
Mahon speaks of the march from Philadelphia as having 
been "fraught with no common difficulties," which, " how- 
ever, were courageously overcome." * But he ignores the 
leading part taken by Washington and the militia in that 
expedition. Washington was the life of it, though he is 
not so much as named by our author in connection with 
the affair. In the only action which occurred in the course 
of it (that of the 14th of September) the regulars were 
again beaten, and it was owing to the Virginians that 
the detachment was not cut to pieces. If no better 
management than that of General Forbes had been at 
work for the overcoming of its difficulties. Fort Duquesne 
instead of Pittsburg might have stood at the forks of the 
Ohio at this day. At twenty-six years of age, Washing- 
ton had established the military reputation which, seven- 
teen years later, made him commander-in-chief of the 
forces of the united Colonies. It was at the close of this 
campaign that he received the thanks of the Virginia 
House of Burgesses, and that, being overcome with em 
barrassment when he attempted to reply, the Speaker 
said, " Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is equal 
to your valor, and that surpasses the power of any lan- 
guage I can use." 

The war with the Cherokees in South Carolina, in 
1759-1761, Lord Mahon, with his right feelings, would 
not have related as he has done,f except from imperfect 
knowledge. It was altogether a i)rutal affair. The Indi- 
ans, no doubt, when foolishly and cruelly injured, carried 
on the conflict after the ferocious fashion of their race. 
But Lyttleton, the Engfish governor of South Carolina, 

* Vol. iv. p. 203. tibid. pp. 291,292. 



11 

was the person chiefly culpable. The Cherokees had been 
friendly. With small thanks and less reward they had 
done useful service in the expedition to the Ohio. There 
had been some disorders on the frontier, and the chiefs 
had quieted their people ; but Lyttleton wanted revenge. 
With needless and heedless obstinacy, regardless of the 
opinions of his best counsellors, — for Lyttleton was a 
martinet and, quoad hoc, a blockhead, — he insisted on 
having the last Cherokee offenders put to death or sur- 
rendered to him, when the savages thought, not without 
reason, that the account had already been pretty fairly 
squared, especially as they were not the original aggress- 
ors. Sincerely desirous of peace, and submitting to unu- 
sual humiliations to preserve it, they were driven into war 
by the outrageous violence and perfidies of the governor, 
who went so far as to keep their envoys as prisoners, and 
at length to put them to death under the miserable pre- 
tence of a conspiracy. His " treaty of peace," of which 
Lord Mahon speaks, was all a sham, well known by him 
to be so, and only intended to give a color to his violent 
proceedings ; it was made with unauthorized persons, and 
in disregard of Indian customs. If, the war begun, the 
Indians carried it on with ferocity, the English did no less. 
A party, sent from the north by General Amherst, under 
Colonel Montgomery, and joined by a South Carolina 
force, committed horrible devastation among the poor 
savages. At length, the Indians waylaid him at Crow's 
Creek, and handled his party so roughly that he immedi- 
ately made a rapid retreat from their country ; a move- 
ment which Lord Mahon (in the use of a euphemism of 
which he presents other specimens) describes as his "re- 
joining Amherst's main army, according to his instruc- 
tions." The savages now had their turn, and they used 
it accordingly, till the following summer, when they were 
finally brought to terms. " A fresh detachment from 
Amherst's army," says Lord Mahon, "after the campaign 
in Canada, soon compelled the Cherokees to sue for 
peace." But the better opinion in America is, that the 
detachment from Amherst's army, which was under the 
command of the same Colonel Grant whom the Virgini- 
ans had saved before Fort Duquesne, did no such thing;. 
but that, on the contrary, the incompetency of Grant was 
2 



12 

redeemed by Middleton and his South Carolina troops. 
However that may be, the poor natives were more sinned 
against than sinning. It is a shocking passage in the 
mal-administration of the colonial governors ; Lord Ma- 
hon, had he understood it, could not have found in his 
good heart to speak of it so coolly. 

But we hasten to his Lordship's just published volumes. 
And of these we must say, in frankness, that, as to that 
portion of them which relates to American affairs, — or 
rather to American events, — they have to us altogether too 
much the appearance of being the result of cramming for 
the occasion, so unlike the rest of the work, which for the 
most part seems to have been written from a full mind. 
Lord Mahon appears to have begun his study of the colo- 
nial history when about to write his forty-third chapter, 
which relates to the passage of the Stamp Act. We judge, 
from the account of the foundation of the New England 
colonies, with which this chapter opens, that he is not so 
much as aware that Plymouth and Massachusetts were 
originally separate governments.* To be sure, they ceased 
to be so in the third year of "William and Mary ; but in 
describing the colony seal of Massachusetts Bay, Lord 
Mahon appears to give it to the Plymouth settlers, who, 

* "At one time," says Lord Mahon, (Vol. v. p. 98) " Crom-well himself, 
then a man of little note, had been on board ship to join them, Avhen there 
came an order from Whitehall that he and the other emigrants should be 
disembarked, — an order, it has been aptly said, which, in its final conse- 
quences, destroyed both kinp^ and commonwealth." A note refers to Lord 
Byron's preface to Marino Fuliero. But the reference to Lord Byron relates. 
we suppose, not to the statement of fact, but to the subjoined remark of 
Lord IByron upon it. The foct we take to be apocryphal, though Lord Ma- 
hon might quote no bad authority for it. Our own historian, Mather, asserts 
it {Mugiialia, Book i. chap. v. § 7) ; but in these latter days his credit is 
not the highest. Hutchinson (History of Massachusetts, Vol. i. p. 42 : a book, 
by the by, which, eminently imjaortant as it was to Lord Mahon's objects, we 
have the strongest persuasion that he never saM',) followed Mather, though 
with less precision of statement. Hume (chap, lii.) speaks of Hutchinson 
as having put the matter beyond question ; and Lord Nugent {Life of 
Hampden, Vol. i. p. 256) has alluded to it with the same easy faith. But 
the fair inference from the statement of our own excellent annalist, Winthrop, 
(Vol. i. pp. 1.35, 266,) appears to bo that all the persons were ultimately per- 
mitted to come over to America, Avho had engaged to do so ; and the lan- 
guage of the contemporary Kushworth, in his record of the proceedings of 
the Privy Council (Vol. ii. p. 409) perfectly coincides with that of Winthrop. 
Nor docs there appear an}' good reason why, Avhen the king hoped to tame 
the young Sir Harry Vane by assenting to his desire of living in New Eng- 
' land, he should have expected to aceomi^lish the same object as to Crom- 
well, by keeping him at home. 



13 

from the time of their having a seal, used one of a quite 
different description. To say nothing, however, of earlier 
matters, most strangely the movements which immedi- 
ately led to the Revolution are traced back no further than 
to the passage of the Stamp Act ; all that had come and 
gone before, since 1760, is despatched with such share 
as may belong to it of the two following periods. 

" At various periods there had arisen between the North Ame- 
rican Colonies and the mother country differences touching the 
restrictions of trade which the latter had imposed. These differ- 
ences were, no doubt, of considerable extent and bitterness ; but, 
in my opinion, had no other and stronger cause of quarrel broken 
forth, they might have been to this day, quietly debated before 
the Board of Trade at Whitehall." Vol. v. p. 122. 

The story is told with scarcely so much as a mention 
of the names of James Otis and Samuel Adams, down to 
1770, when Otis was disabled and withdrew from public 
life. The tragedy of Hamlet is performed with the part 
of Hamlet omitted. For heaven's sake, then, the Ameri- 
can reader asks, who are put upon the scene ? And the 
answer is, Henry and Franklin. For aught the reader 
of Lord Mahon knows to the contrary, they bore the 
whole burden and heat of the day. For aught that Lord 
Mahon appears to know, others might as well have been 
spared from the conflict. The chapter which relates to 
the passage of the Stamp Act, and its immediate conse- 
quences, has no place for the Massachusetts Dioscuri, but 
sketches at length the characters of " those two eminent 
men who at this time took the foremost part in opposing 
the pretensions of the mother country on either side of 
the Atlantic — Patrick Henry in America, and Benjamin 
Franklin in England." 

Far be it from us to withhold any honor from those great 
names. But fair play is a jewel, and we desire to see it 
allowed on all sides. Franklin rendered excellent service to 
the cause of American freedom. His labors were chiefly, as 
Lord Mahon says, in England, where he was agent for the 
colonies of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
Georgia. But he was not one of those to whom the 
vision of coming independence was earliest disclosed, nor 
will a person well informed on the subject pretend that 
any part of his great merit was that of a pioneer in the 



14 

assertion of Revolutionary doctrine. Lord Mabon's own 
volumes would afford some materials for refuting such an 
error. As to Patrick Henry, he was a miracle of natural 
eloquence. In 1765, he was fwenty-nine years old. In 
that year he took his seat in the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses, having acquired a sudden and brilliant reputation 
a year or two before by a marvellous exhibition of foren- 
sic oratory, but being yet wholly unknown as a legislator 
or statesman. He proposed, and, in the face of a formi- 
dable opposition of the hitherto leading men of the An- 
cient Dominion, carried through, a series of five Resolu- 
tions relating to the passage of the Stamp Act. In the 
last of them lay the sting of the whole. It was carried 
by a majority of only one vote, and, on a reconsideration 
the next day, was expunged from the journal, but found its 
way before the public through the newspapers. It was as 
follows. 

" Resolved, therefore, that the General Assembly of this colony 
have the sole right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon 
the inhabitants of this colony ; and that every attempt to vest 
such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the 
General Assembly aforesaid, has a manifest tendency to destroy 
British, as well as American, freedom." 

These resolutions were passed on the 30th day of May, 
1765. They produced a great and salutary excitement 
throughout the country. Nearly a year before, on the 
L3th day of June, 1764, — and in revolutions years are 
ages, — the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in 
a document of equal formality and publicity, a letter to 
their agent in London, written to be communicated to 
the ministry, and immediately printed in the newspapers, 
had announced the same doctrine in all its breadth in the 
following words : " The silence of the province should 
have been imputed to any cause, even to despair, rather 
than be construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or 
an acknowledgment of a right in the Parliament of Great 
Britain to impose duties and taxes upon a people who are 
not represented in the House of Commons." And in Oc- 
tober, 1764, the New York Assembly, taking up the same 
testimony, proceed to " inform the Commons of Great 
Britain, that the people of this colony, inspired by the 



15 

genius of their mother country, nobly disdain the thought 
of claiming that exemption as a privilege ; they found 
it on a basis more honorable, solid, and stable ; they chal- 
lenge, and glory in it, as their right." 

We might refer to other facts of the same nature, of 
earlier date than tlie Virginia movement. In what, then, 
consisted the great importance of the Resolutions, which, 
as Lord INIahon rightly says, " the House of Burgesses of 
his [Henry's] province was induced to pass," " mainly 
through his eloquence and energy? " In this, — that they 
were the much-desired adhesion of Virginia to the north- 
ern doctrine. Massachusetts, then the great northern colo- 
ny, was safe for it long ago. The great southern colony, 
Virginia, now adopted it. Had either Massachusetts or 
Virginia held back, it could scarcely be that the other colo- 
nies should go forward. Massachusetts had gone forward. 
Virginia now stood by her side. And, from that day, 
there was strong encouragement and confidence. And so 
far as that made the Revolution, Patrick Henry and his 
Resolutions made it, but hardly to the exclusion of the 
agency of others, who had earlier done the same sort of 
work. If any one thinks that the Revolution is to be dated 
from the time when Virginia first maintained strong 
doctrine as to the right of taxation, it will be reasonable 
for him to refer the Revolution to Patrick Henry's Reso- 
lutions. But such, we venture to say, is not and will not 
be the sentence of history.* 

Four years after Henry's Resolutions, James Otis was 
still known to the British statesmen as the chief cham- 
pion of the American claims, and was referred to as such 
by Lord Clare and Mr. Burke, in debate in Parliament. 
Four years before Patrick Henry's Resolutions, in Feb- 
ruary, 1761, in the State House in Boston, James Otis 
argued the question of the " Writs of Assistance " before 

*Lorcl Slahon says, that "it was universally thought the Address (of the 
Congress in 1774) to the English people was composed by JIi-. John Jay, of 
New York, and the Petition to the King by ilr. Richard Henry Lee, of Vir- 
ginia." When his Lordship looks into the second volume of the Political 
Writings of John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, he will tind that the latter 
document came from the pen of the famous author of the Farmer's Letters. 
Lee wrote the Address to the Colonies. See the Life of Richard Henri/ Lee, 

by his grandson, R. H. Lee. Vol. i. p. 119. 
9 * 



16 

the Judges of the Superior Court. John Adams knew 
something of the history of American Independence, and 
this is what he has left on record as to his sense of the 
importance of that transaction. 

" Otis was a flame of fire ; with a promptitude of classical 
allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical 
events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic 
glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous 
eloquence, he hurried away all before him. American Independ- 
ence was then and there born. The seeds of j^atriots and heroes, 
to defend the No7i sine Diis animosiis infans, to defend the vigor- 
ous youth, were then and there sown. Every man of an immense 
crovt'ded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to 
take arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there, was the 
first scene of the first act of opposition to the ai'bitrary claims of 
Great Britain. Then and there, the child Independence was 
born. In fifteen years, that is, in 177G, he grew up to manhood 
and declared himself free." Tudor's Life of James Otis, pp. 
60, Gl. 

And, again : 

" I do say in the most solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration 
against "Writs of Assistance, breathed into this nation the breath 
of fife." Ihid. pp. 87, 88. 

Such was the opinion of a friend to the cause, than 
whom no other was more discerning or better informed. 
What did its enemies think ? Towards the close of 
1766, Governor Bernard wrote to Lord Shelburne : " The 
troubles in this country take their rise from, and owe their 
continuance to, one man, so much that his history alone 
would contain a full account of them. This man, James 
Otis, Esq., was a lawyer in Boston, when I came to the 
government," &c.* 

It is the same John Adams, whose opinion of Otis's 
services we have given above, of whom Lord Mahon 
says: 

'•' I observe that Mr. John Adams, in his private Diary, from 
time to time mentions Otis with no high respect. Thus, Dec. 23, 
1765 : ' Otis is fiery and feverous ; he is liable to great inequali- 
ties of temper, sometimes in despondency and sometimes in a 
rage.' Thus again, Sept. 3, 1769 : ' Otis talks all; he grows the 

* Bowen's Life of Otis, in Sparks's Ain. Biog. p. 147. 



17 

most talkative man alive ; no otlier gentleman in company can 
find space to put in a word.' " Vol. v. p. 408. 

The character ascribed by Adams to Otis in 1765 
always belonged to him. It was the infelicity of his 
temperament, consistent however with generous and 
splendid qualities, and by no means excluding " high re- 
spect " in one who observed and recorded it. With 
growing years it became aggravated into insanity, to 
which condition it was rapidly tending when, in 1769, 
Adams described Otis as growing " the most talkative 
man alive." This was the last year that he passed for a 
sane man. But if Lord Mahon entertains a " high re- 
spect " for Lord Chatham, notwithstanding the imbecile 
prostration of the time of his second administration, why 
is Adams to be quoted as denying respect to Otis under 
like circumstances ? 

Of " the two Adamses, Samuel and John," Lord Ma- 
hon says that 

'•' These were distant kinsmen and close friends, and both men 
of much ability, but far diiFerent in character ; the fii'st a dema- 
gogue, the second a statesman." Vol. v. p. 408. 

According to the etymology of the word, a demagogue 
means simply a popular leader. And this Samuel Adams 
eminently was. But a demagogue, in the invidious sense 
of that word, he certainly was not. He sought no pri- 
vate ends. He had a Spartan contempt for money and 
parade. He was a man of theories, — narrow theories, 
sometimes — but standing in his consideration far above 
all personal objects. The most special notice which Lord 
Mahon takes of him is to repeat a piece of scandal from 
the simple, but credulous, and therefore not too trust- 
worthy Gordon.* But as he subsequently took pains to get 
further information, and on the strength of it has made the 
amende in his Appendix,! we pass that question by. It is 
certain that the people of Massachusetts, and especially his 
fellow-citizens of Boston, who best knew and were most 
interested in any cause of complaint against him of the 
sort alleged, extended to him a remarkable degree of 
confidence throughout his long life. In it there are no so 
salient passages as in the life of Otis. But, as much as 

* Vol. vi. p. 183. t Vol. vi. p. xvi. 



18 

any other person in the early period of the ante-revolu- 
tionary disputes, Samuel Adams was the man of reflec- 
tion and daring, and, more than any other person, the 
man of business. He tempered and partly directed the 
impetuosity of Otis, and his more careful and fastidious 
pen was constantly in use to prune the exuberances and 
correct the method of his friend. Much of the important 
public correspondence of the time, as the Massachusetts 
petition to the king, the letters to members of the minis- 
try and other persons in power in England, and the circu- 
lar letter to the Assemblies of the other colonies, are 
known to have been thus their joint production, Otis fur- 
nishing the first draft, and Adams making amendments 
and additions. To Adams is probably due the invention 
of that potent enginery, the committees for correspond- 
ence between the different colonies. And on all hands, 
we believe, he is allowed to have suggested the commit- 
tees of correspondence between the towns of Massachu- 
setts, in which the other more extensive plan had its 
pattern. He has been said, but we do not know on 
what authority, to have first suggested the idea of the 
non-importation agreement, and that of the Congress at 
New York, in 1764, which led, ten years after, to the Conti- 
nental Congress.* In the caucuses and the popular assem- 
blies he was the oracle, and one never known to utter an 
ambiguous response. Lord Mahon may depend upon it 
that the history of American politics from 1760 to 1770 
will not hold together in the absence of those two names. 

His Lordship, following Mr. Adolphus, supposes that 
the famous speech of Colonel Barre on the passage of 
the Stamp Act was an afterthought. He says : 

""Within doors the scheme was opposed with little vigor. Pitt 
Avas ill in bed at Hayes, and only a few of his friends, as Colonel 
Barre and Alderman Baker, spoke or voted against it. Nine 
years afterwards, and in the presence no doubt of many men who 
had witnessed these discussions, Mr. Burke described them in the 
following terms : ' Far from any thing inflammatory, I never heard 
a more languid debate in this House. No more than two or three 
gentlemen as I remember spoke against the Act, and that with 
great reserve and remarkable temper. There was but one divi- 
sion in the whole progress of the Bill and the minority did not 

* Biography of the Signers. &c. p. 293. 



19 

reach to more than thirty-nine or forty. In the House of Lords 
I do not recollect that there was any debate or division at all.' 

" There is extant, nevertheless, an eloquent and well-known 
burst of oratory, which is ascribed to Colonel Barre, on one of 
these occasions. Mr. Grenville having spoken of the Americans 
as children of our own, jilanted by our care and nourished by our 
indulgence. Colonel Barre exclaimed : ' Children planted by your 
care ! No, your oppression planted them in America, they fled 
from your tyranny into a then uncultivated land;' — and there 
follows a fine philippic against the misgovernment of the mother 
country. But on further examination there appears the strongest 
reason to doubt whether these words were really uttered at that 
time. In the first place, they are not recorded in the contempo- 
rary Debates of Debrett. Secondly, they ai'e hard to reconcile with 
the authentic description of Burke. It is probable therefore that 
some time afterwards, and when our dissensions with America 
had already darkened, this speech, under the name of revision, 
and on a slight foundation of reality, was added by the pen of 
Barre." Vol. v. pp. 130, 131. 

This is an anachronism, and an miachorism besides. A 
Congressional orator nowadays publishes a speech in a 
pamphlet which it takes two or three hours to read, when 
the honorable gentleman has only been twice as many 
minutes on his legs. But we never heard of this being 
the practice in England. At all events, it was not in 
Col. Barre's time. Mr. Adolphus and Lord Mahon are 
mistaken. Mr. Francis Dana, afterwards Chief Justice 
of Massachusetts, heard Barre's speech, and wrote home 
an account of it at the time. But Lord Mahon might 
have found his contradiction in print. In June, 1766, 
Jared Ingersoll, then recently returned from London, 
where he had been agent for the colony of Connecticut, 
published at New Haven a pamphlet containing, among 
other letters, one addressed by him to Governor Fitch on 
the 11th of February, 1765. In this letter he gives the 
following account of the proceedings on the passage of 
the Stamp Act, at which he was present : 

" The debate upon the American Stamp Bill came on before 
the House for the first time, last Wednesday, when the same was 
opened by Mr. Grenville, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a 
pretty lengthy speech ; and in a very able, and I think, in a very 
candid manner, he opened the nature of the tax ; urged the ne- 
cessity of it ; endeavored to obviate all objections; — and took 



20 

occasion to desire the House to give tlie Bill a most sei-ious and 
cool consideration, and not suffer themselves to be influenced by 
any resentments, which might have been kindled from any thing 
they might have heard out of doors : — (alluding, I suppose, to 
the New York and Boston Assemblies' speeches and votes) — 
that this was a matter of revenue, Avhich of all things was the 
most interesting to the subject, &c., &c. — The argument was 
taken up by several who opposed the Bill, namely by Alderman 
Beckford, Col. Barre, Mr. Jcickson, Sir William Meredith, and 
some others. Mr. Barre, who by the way, I think, and I find I 
am not alone in my opinion, is one of the finest speakers that the 
House can boast of, having been some time in America as an offi- 
cer in the army, and having, while there, as I had known before, 
contracted many friendships Avith American gentlemen, and I 
believe entertained much more favorable opinions of them, than 
some of his profession have done, delivered a very handsome and 
moving speech upon the Bill, and against the same, concluding 
by saying, that he was very sure that most who should hold up 
their hands to the Bill, must be imder a necessity of acting very 
much in the dark, but added, ' perhaps as well in the dark as any 
way.' 

" After him Mr. Charles Townsend spoke in favor of the Bill ; 
— took notice of several things Mr. Barre had said, and conclud- 
ed with the following, or like words : — ' And now Avill these 
Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our 
indulgence, until they are grown to a degree of strength and opu- 
lence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute 
their mite, to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which 
we lie under ? ' When he had done, Mr. Barre rose, and hav- 
ing explained something which he had before said, and which Mi'. 
Townsend had been remarking upon, he then took up the before- 
mentioned concluding words of Mr. Townsend, and in a most 
spirited, and, I thought, an almost inimitable manner, said, 

" ' They planted by your care ! No, your oppressions planted 
'em in America. They fled from your tyranny, to a then uncul- 
tivated and unhospitable country ; Avhere they exposed them- 
selves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is 
liable ; and among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe, the 
most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of 
any people upon the face of God's earth ; and yet, actuated by 
principles of true English liberty, they met all these hardships 
with pleasure, comjiared with those they suffered in their own 
country, from the hands of those who should have been their 
friends. 

" ' They nourished up by your indulgence ! They grew by 
your neglect of 'em : — As soon as you began to care about 'em, 



21 

that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over 'em, in 
one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies 
of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their 
liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon 'em ; 
— men, Avhose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the 
blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them ; — men pro- 
moted to the highest seats of justice, some, who to my knowledge, 
were glad by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought 
to the bar of a court of justice in their own. 

" ' They protected by your arms ! They have nobly taken up 
arms in your defence ; have exerted a valor amidst their constant 
and laborious industry, for the defence of a country, whose fron- 
tier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts have yielded all 
its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remem- 
ber that I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which 
actuated that people at first, will accompany them still ; — but 
prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do 
not at this time spealc from motives of party heat ; what I de- 
liver are the genuine sentiments of my heart : However superior 
to me in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body 
of this house may be, yet I claim to know more of America than 
most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country. 
The people, I believe, are as truly loyal, as any subjects the 
king has ; but a people jealous of their liberties, and Avho will 
vindicate them, if ever they should be violated ; — but the sub- 
ject is too delicate, and I will say no more.' 

" These sentiments were thrown out so entirely without pre- 
meditation, so forcibly and so firmly, and the breaking off so 
beautifully abrupt, that the whole house sat awhile as amazed, 
intently looking, and without ansvfering a word. 

" I own I felt emotions that I never felt before ; and went the 
next morning and thanked Col. Barre, in behalf of my country, 
for his noble and spirited speech. However, sir, after all that 
was said, upon a division of the house upon the question, there 
was about two hundred and fifty, to about fifty, in favor of the 
bill." Mr. Ingersoll's Letters, pp. 14-17. 

There can be no question about this evidence. " Last 
Wednesday," (which by the calendars we find to be Febru- 
ary 6th,) Ingersoll says that Barre made a speech, which 
IngersoU reports, just as American children have had it 
almost ever since in their school-books. Lord Mahon 
says that it is " not recorded in the contemporary Debates 
of Debrett." But, as his Lordship has looked into De- 
brett to verify that statement, he knows that the whole 
proceedings in relation to the Stamp Act, are despatched 



22 

in eleven lines of that concise reporter * The supposition of 
Barre's speech having been made at the time alleged, again 
says Lord Mahon,is " hard to reconcile with the authentic 
description of Burke." But what proceedings was it 
in particular that Burke authentically described ? It is hard 
to say. If they were those of the 6th of February, either 
Burke's memory was in fault, or he estimated Barre's elo- 
quence in a way we should not expect from him. In a later 
letter (of March 6th,) Ingersoll, referring to his former "par- 
ticular account of the reception the American Stamp Bill 
met with in the House of Commons upon the first bring- 
ing of it in," says, (p. 22,) " since that time, in the further 
progress of the bill through the House, there have been 
some further debates, the most considerable of which was 
at the second reading of the bill." On that day too, 
Ingersoll, — a colony agent, interested to observe the facts, 
and under no motive, as far as we can see, to deceive, — 
says that the presentation of a Virginia petition by Sir 
William Meredith " drew on a pretty warm debate ;" that 
" Mr. Yorke, the late Attorney-General, delivered himself 
in a very long speech ;" that "in the most peremptory 
manner " General Conway " denied the right of parlia- 
ment to tax us ; " that he " urged with great vehemence 
the many hardships and what he was pleased to call ab- 
surdities that would follow from the contrary doctrine 
and practice," and that " the hardships and inconven- 
iences were also again urged and placed in various lights 
by our other friends in the House." And he says farther 
on, under the date of March 6th, (p. 23,) " It is about 
four days since the Bill passed through all the necessary 
forms in the House of Commons, and is now ready and 
lies before the Lords for their concurrence." 

It was then pending in the House from February 6th to 
about March 2d. On the 6th of February, Barre made 
his famous speech, and it was in answer to Charles 
Townsend, and not to George Grenville, whom Lord Ma- 
hon, by yet another error, supposes to have been the 
alleged opponent of Barre on that occasion. " In the 
further progress of the bill " there were " some further de- 
bates," of one of which in particular, Ingersoll, within 
three or four weeks at the longest, gives a detailed account. 

* Parliamentary Register, Vol. iv. pp. 250, 251. 



23 

Nine years after, Burke used language which Lord Ma- 
hon interprets as proving that the Stamp Act passed 
almost sub silentio, and, in particular, that Barre's speech 
upon it, as it has since gone into the books, is a fiction. 
Lord Mahon must look for some other explanation of 
Burke's words. After the facts which we have stated, 
he will own that his former inference from them must be 
abandoned. 

Barre's speech, as copied from Ingersoll's letter to the 
Governor, appeared in the New London Gazette on the 
10th of May, 1765, a few days only after the news of the 
final passage of the Stamp Act reached America, and 
immediately went flying all abroad through the conti- 
nent on the wings of all the newspapers. This we might 
not have been surprised that Lord Mahon should have 
overlooked. But there is one somewhat public refutation 
of his mistake which might have been less expected to 
escape his notice. He is acquainted with the phrase 
" Sons of Liberty," for he says (p. 361,) " thus did the 
opposition parties in America continue (in 1769) to call 
themselves." But it seems he did not know that it had 
its origin in 1765, in the enthusiasm for Barre's speech, 
who had used it. For this fact, which in America is so 
notorious as to need no proof, we appeal, for Lord Ma- 
hon's satisfaction, to Ingersoll's pamphlet ; who says, 
(p. 16, note,) " I believe I may claim the honor of having 
been the author of this title, (Sons of Liberty,) however 
little personal good I have got by it, having been the only 
person, by what I can discover, who transmitted Mr. 
Barre's speech to America." 

It is perhaps scarcely worth while to mention that the 
device of a snake cut in pieces, with the initial letters of 
the names of the several colonies affixed to the parts, 
with the motto " Join or Die," which appeared at the head 
of the " Constitutional Courant " after the passage of the 
Stamp Act, was not contrived for that occasion, as Lord 
Mahon (p. 133) appears to suppose. It was invented by 
Franklin, at the beginning of the previous war, with the 
design of uniting the colonies against the French, and was 
published at that time in his newspaper, the " Pennsjd- 

vania Gazette." * y 

;»_ 

* See Sparks"s Writings of Franklin, vol. iii. p. 25. 
3 



24 

Of not much more consequence is a mistake a little 
further on, if it were not for the unpleasant use which 
it is made to serve. After the signature of the treaty of 
peace in 1783, a story was current in England that Frank- 
lin appeared on that occasion in the same dress of " Man- 
chester velvet," in which he had been clad, when, eight 
years before, he was the object of Wedderburn's vitu- 
peration before the Privy Council ; thus showing the deep 
resentment with which he had treasured up the remem- 
brance of that scene. Lord Mahon says, (vol. v. p. 495,) 
" Mr. Sparks has given some strong reasons against the 
truth of this story," and adds, referring to that gentle- 
man's edition of Franklin's "Writings, (vol. i. p. 488,) 
" But Mr. Sparks is quite mistaken when he proceeds to 
say that this story was fabricated in England, ' to gratify 
the malevolence of a disappointed party.' " But this is 
not precisely what Mr. Sparks did proceed to say. Mr. 
Sparks's words were these : " The report was fabricated in 
England at a time when the treaty was a topic of vehe- 
ment discussion ; and it was eagerly seized upon to gra- 
tify the malevolence of a disappointed party." Now there 
can be no question that a story may be fabricated as a 
pleasantry, and afterwards seized upon for a purpose. 
And this is a distinction which apparently Mr. Sparks 
meant to make ; at all events, it is one which his lan- 
guage intimates. And Lord Mahon should recognize the 
difference between fabricating a thing, which his Lord- 
ship never does himself, and seizing upon it when fabri- 
cated, an error from which (as in the case of the Baroness 
Riedesel's reports,) he is not equally exempt. He goes 
on to say, that the story " was told by one whom Mr. 
Sparks will hardly consider an adherent of what he terms 
the malevolent and disappointed party, namely. Dr. 
Priestley, and it was vouched for most distinctly by Dr. 
Bancroft, an American, and an intimate friend of Frank- 
lin." And for this he refers to Sparks's Franklin.* But 
here his Lordship is still more astray. He well knows 
the difference between the treaty of peace with Great 
Britain in 1783, and the treaty of alliance with France in 
1778 ; and if he had overlooked it, the very note of Mr. 

* Vol. iv. p. 45.3. 



25 

Sparks, to which he refers, read carefully, would have 
brought it to his mind. That note cites the authority of 
Dr. Priestley and Dr. Bancroft for an incident of the sign- 
ing of the treaty of 1778, and not at all of the treaty of 
1783, as Lord Mahon imagines. These things are not 
material. But a writer of his Lordship's reputation has a 
character for exactness to maintain ; and especially he can- 
not be too careful as to accuracy in quotations and refer- 
ences, when he intends to make them the basis of censo- 
rious comment. 

In December, 1776, a large building in the dock-yard 
at Portsmouth was consumed by fire. Soon after, a 
quantity of combustibles was found concealed in another 
building of the same establishment ; and, still later, at- 
tempts were made to fire the shipping at Plymouth and 
Bristol. Suspicion fell upon a young Englishman, named 
Aitken, who had been in America, and who was other- 
wise called John the Painter. While in gaol, a fellow- 
craftsman gained his confidence, and 

" John the Painter was by degrees drawn in to own to his false 
friend that he was engaged in a design of setting fire to the seve- 
ral dock-yards, and thus destroying the navy of Great Britain, 
and that he had been more than once to Paris to concert his 
measures for that object with Mr. Silas Deane. ' Do you not know 
Silas Deane ? ' he asked. ' What, no, — not Silas Deane ? ' He 
is a fine clever fellow ; and I believe Benjamin Franklin is em- 
ployed on the same errand.' The prisoner added that Silas 
Deane had encouraged him in his noble enterprise, inquiring all 
the particulars, and supplying him with the money he wanted." 
VoL vi. pp. 217, 218. 

As Franklin had just arrived in France when the Ports- 
mouth dock-yard was set on fire, and had not yet reached 
Paris, Lord Mahon, in a note, acquits him of any privity 
to the transaction. But he does it with little grace, think- 
ing proper to add, — 

" Yet some persons may consider as significant the hint which 
he drops in a letter to Dr. Priestley many months before : ' Eng- 
land has begun to burn our seaport towns ; secure, I suppose, 
that we shall never be able to return the outrage in kind.' 
Works, voL viii. p. 15G." Vol. vi. pp. 217, 218. 

This was said by Franklin in allusion to the burning 
of Charlestown by the British, during the battle of Bun- 



26 

ker Hill. If Lord Mahon regards those words of Frank- 
lin as affording any presumption that Franklin or his 
countrymen would be disposed to send incendiaries into 
the cities of England to retaliate that act of military 
wantonness, then perhaps less importance is to be attached 
to his Lordship's opinion of Silas Deane, on whom, for 
want of such a proof of alibi as Franklin's, he appears 
willing to allow the Painter's charge to rest. 

But to go back again some years. We cannot quite 
acquiesce in Lord Mahon's estimate of Sir Francis Ber- 
nard, though we are aware that he is not without appa- 
rently good authority for his opinion. We think we 
could point to not a few occasions on which a man, such 
as he describes Bernard, would not have acted as Bernard 
did. We have materials for arguing the point, but, on 
the whole, we must pass it by, as requiring an induction 
of facts too large for our present limits. Lord Mahon 
says that Bernard was " a man of ability ftnd firmness, 
but harsh and quarrelsome." We could not select the 
epithet " harsh " as well characterizing him,, and we are 
by no means clear that he should be called " quarrel- 
some." Sir Francis was a^ accomplished man, of un- 
exceptionable private life, and of distinguished talents for 
society. He had governed New Jersey very satisfactorily 
to the people. Notwithstanding the dissatisfaction occa- 
^oned by the appointment of Hutchinson as Chief Jus- 
\ tice, he was, on the whole, popular through the first three 
"^ifjiars — Hutchinson says, through the fir^t five years — 
oPhis administration of Massaefeusetts, and the provin- 
cial government gave him subst«]raal tokens of its good 
will. But he was not rich ; he had a large family to pro- 
vide for ; and this was to be done through official pre- 
ferment, which accordingly he was always seeking. The 
way to preferment was through ministerial favor, and the 
way to the favor of court and ministry when George the 
Third was king, and George Grenville was minister, was 
through a lofty assertion of the prerogative. He stood 
for prerogative confidently, ably, and at the same time 
imprudently. Had he been more cunning, he would have 
dealt more in generals. He spread his argument too 
much, volunteered too many applications of his principles, 
and exposed too many points to attack. He was engaged 



27 

with abler men than himself. Otis, Adams, and Bowdoin 
made wild work with his state papers. Such refutations 
as he got from them are of the things that drive wise 
men mad. It was hardly in human nature — it was not 
in that of Sir Francis — to bear them with equanimity. 
Had there been less in him, he would have ventured less, 
and sought quiet in inefficiency. As it was, his conscious 
ability, stimulated by his needy ambition, tempted him 
to repeated conflicts, and so involved him, again and 
again, in vexatious defeats. That under such circum- 
stances, he should have sometimes betrayed irritation, and 
suffered himself to be driven to undignified expedients, 
we do not think justifies calling him " harsh and quarrel- 
some." But perhaps this is not much more than a dis- 
pute about words, and at all events we have not space to 
pursue it. Champion of parliamentary supremacy as he 
was, Bernard was opposed to the Stamp Act.* His inde- 
pendent good sense, had he been left to follow it, would 
have saved him from many indiscretions. It was not so 
much ill temper that led him into them, as the erroneous 
estimates of popular opinion into which he was seduced by 
the crown officers and their adherents. He was never, by 
any means, so much an object of dislike as Hutchinson 
became, though it is true, this was partly owing to the 
feeling that Hutchinson, as a Massachusetts man, had 
added treachery to oppression. 

" In Rhode Island," says Lord Mahon, " there had 
taken place a most daring outrage during the past year, 
(1772,) when a king's ship, the Gaspe'e schooner, which 
was employed against the illicit ' traders, was boarded, 
set on fire, and destroyed." f l)aring, undoubtedly, that 
affair may well be called. The Gaspee was boarded 



* " I would not presume to give advice to his Majesty's ministers of State : 
but yet I hope I shall be excused when I reveal my earnest wishes, that some 
means may be found to make it consistent with the dignity of parliament to 
put the Stamp Act out of the question, at least for the present." Bernard's 
Letter to Secretary Comvai/, of October 28th, 1765, in ''Select Letters" of 
Bernard (London, 1774,) p. 28. " I heartily disapproved of the Stamp Act. 
before it passed. I voted against it, and doubt not I shall vote for the repeal. 
I knew your sentiments were tlie same as mine on this subject." K. Jack- 
son to "Bernard, November 8th, 1765, in 3Iassackusetts State Papers, (Bos- 
ton, 1818,) p. 70. 

t Vol. V. p. 483. 

3* 



28 

at midnight, in Narragansett Bay, from eight boats from 
Providence, set on fire, and destroyed. On the arrival 
of the intelligence in England, a royal proclamation 
was issued offering a large reward for the discovery of 
the perpetrators, and a royal commission proceeded to 
Rhode Island, and made laborious scrutiny for their 
detection ; but they kept each other's counsel, and were 
not discovered. There had been plenty of " outrage " 
on' the part of the petty officer in command of the vessel, 
to provoke her fate. Contrary to English law, he had 
sent property, seized by him, out of the colony, for trial at 
Boston ; and in a letter of complaint to Lord Hillsborough, 
the Governor of Rhode Island had had occasion to repre- 
sent that " since the Gaspee and Beaver have been sta- 
tioned in this colony, the inhabitants have been insulted 
without any just cause, with the most abusive and con- 
tumelious language, and I am sorry that I have reason to 
say that the principal officers belonging to said vessels 
have exercised that power with which they are vested, in 
a wanton and arbitrary manner." A previous correspond- 
ence on the subject between the Governor and Admiral 
Montague, commanding on the station, had been con- 
ducted by that officer with the insolence customary with 
the officers of the royal navy in their communications 
with the colonial governments in those times.* 

Lord Mahon habitually looks upon the people and the 
measures of Massachusetts with less favor than upon 
those of the other colonies. In April, 1775, the Provin- 
cial Congress of Massachusetts addressed a letter to a 
missionary among the Indians of the Six Nations, re- 
questing him to use his " influence with them to join with 
us in the defence of our rights ; but if you cannot pre- 
vail with them," it continues, " to take an active part in 
this glorious cause, that you will at least engage them to 
stand neuter, and not by any means to aid and assist our 
enemies." The former of the two clauses which we have 
quoted. Lord Mahon cites, with an unpleasant paraphrase 
of his own.f For the letter, he refers in a note to Mr. 
Sparks's edition of Washington'' s Writings, (vol. iii. p. 495,) 

* The story is told, and the whole evidence collected in a pamphlet pub- 
lished by William 11. Staples, at Providence, in 1845. See also Gordon's 
History, vol. i. pp. 311, 312. 

t Vol. vi. p. 53. 



29 

and adds : " The pretext assigned for this application 
was a rumor, ' that those who are inimical to us in Can- 
ada have been tampering with those Nations,' — an as- 
sertion very easy to make." It was an assertion very 
easy to make. But as Lord Mahon might have learned 
from that very note of Mr. Sparks, to which he has re- 
ferred for the letter, there were facts which made it ap- 
pear to be also an assertion pretty easy to substantiate. 
Several months before, a committee, of which Sariiuel 
Adams, Joseph Warren, and John Hancock were mem- 
bers, had been directed by the Congress to correspond 
with persons in Canada for the purpose of obtaining in- 
telligence of movements in that province.* Emissaries 
were likewise despatched to Canada, instructed to consult 
with the friends of the American cause, and report such 
information as they might procure. They had reported 
"that secret agents had been sent among the Indians of 
the Six Nations to gain them over and stir them up 
against the colonists," — intelligence, the correctness of 
which was substantiated by the shocking butchery of 
Americans at the Cedars, early in the following year, by 
Indians under the command of a British officer. In a 
letter to General Schuyler, towards the close of the same 
year, Washington speaks of proofs before possessed " of the 
ministry's intention to engage the savages against us" as 
" incontrovertible," and adds that they were then recently 
confirmed by some intercepted despatches.! 

In respect to the first battle of the Revolution, that of 
the 19th of April, 1775, Lord Mahon very correctly uses 
the following language. 

" Before the British, now exhausted with long marching, could 
again reach Lexington their retreat had grown into a rout. Their 
utter destruction would have ensued had not General Gage, to 
guard against any adverse turn of fortune, sent forward that very 
morning another detachment under Lord Percy to support them.| 
That new force they found just arrived at Lexington. Here 
Lord Percy's men formed a hollow square, into which the British 
of the first detachment flung themselves at full length, utterly 

* Journals of the Provincial Congresses, p. 59 ; Dec. 6tb, 1774. 
t Sparks's Washington, vol. iii. p. 210. 

I In fact, Colonel Smith had sent back to General Gage for this reinforce- 
ment early in the morning, on finding that the country was alarmed. 



30 

spent with fatigue, says one of their own Commissaries, and 
' their tongues hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs 
after a chase ! ' After some brief interval for rest and refresh- 
ment the whole united force, amounting to eighteen hundred men, 
continued the retreat, and towards svuiset reached the shores of 
Boston harbor, harassed all the way by the American's fire from 
behind stone walls and every other place of ambush." Vol. vi. 
pp. 55, 56. 

This, one would think, might pass for a defeat, on Lord 
Mahon's own showing. But he is not content to leave 
it so. He must needs complain that, 

" The retreat of the British troops to Boston, which was always 
intended as soon as they had accomplished the object of their 
march, was held forth as an undesigned and ignominious flight 
before a conquering enemy." Vol. vi. p. 57. 

Why it should not be, we should like to know. As to 
its being "ignominious," we will not quarrel about words, 
nor do we care to insist that it is ignominious to run 
when there is nothing to be got by standing. But as to its 
being an " undesigned flight before a conquering enemy," 
we cannot for our lives see how there can be two opinions. 
We suppose it was not " intended " by General Gage, that 
his troops, " as soon as they had accomplished the object of 
their march," should come back from Concord to Boston 
upon a trot, a trot which " became a gallop soon." We 
take it to have been no part of that officer's plan to have 
the retrograde movement of his men so rapid, that when 
met by Lord Percy's detachment, and received into a 
hollow square, where they were protected by artillery 
against king's arms and fowling-pieces, they " flung them- 
selves at full length, utterly spent with fatigue, and their 
tongues hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs 
after a chase." Nor do we believe it to have been a feature 
of General Gage's sketch of operations for the day, that 
even the reinforcing party should owe it only to the ap- 
proach of night, that a man of them got back to tell the 
day's story. To say that the British behaved on that 
occasion as well as circumstances permitted, may be fair 
enough. But to pretend that they were not disastrously 
beaten is puerile.* 

* In a note, Lord Mahon refers to Colonel Smith's report to General Gage, in 



31 

As Lord Mahon carried on the early dispute with Eng- 
land without the help of Otis or Adams, so he makes 
shift to fight the battle of Bunker Hill without Prescott 
or Putnam. Certainly, in a military point of view. Ban- 
ker Hill was not Waterloo. But the story of Waterloo 
would be as complete without Wellington, as that of 
Bunker Hill without Prescott. 

" The Americans also received from their main army a large 
accession of force, led on by Dr. Joseph Warren, the physician 
of Boston, who had lately become the President of the Massa- 
chusetts Congress, and been raised (by his own authority in fact) 
to the rank of Major- General." Vol. vi. p. 83. 

This is all wrong. General Warren was raised to the 
rank of Major- General on the 14th day of June, not at 
all by his own authority, but like other general officers, by 
a vote of the Provincial Congress. He led no " large 
accession of force " to Bunker Hill. He went alone, with 
his musket on his shoulder, and just before the action 
began, reported himself to Prescott as a volunteer, declin- 
ing the command which Prescott offered him. 

Of the numbers engaged at Bunker Hill, Lord Mahon 
says, — 

" One account, published in Rhode Island, swells the British 
to five thousand, while reducing the Americans to two thousand 
men, thus nearly inverting the true numbers. • • • • The more 
judicious and candid American historians have since admitted 
their troops to have amounted to four thousand. But if we may 
rely on the official relation, addressed by General Gage to the 
Secretary of State, the British in this battle were opposed by 
' above three times their own number,' — that is, by upwards of 
seven thousand men." Vol. vi. p. 89. 

There is no certainty to be had on this subject. But 
by the side of Lord Mahon's argument, we will put down 

which that officer charged the Americans with having " scalped and otherwise 
ill-treated one or two of our men, who were either killed or severely wounded, 
this being seen by a party that marched by soon after." What is true of 
this story is bad enough. As the militia cli'ove the British from Concord 
bridge, a young man killed with a hatchet a wounded soldier who lay in his 
way. It was a brutal act. We wish that innumerable such acts had not 
occcun-ed, before and since, in the heat of tight. As to the scalping of either 
one or two men, we presume that there is not a particle of proof of such an 
occurrence, and Colonel Smith's own vague way of making the representa- 
tion is not such as to entitle it to credit. 



32 

that of Mr. Frothingham, who, in his very learned and 
trustworthy " History of the Siege of Boston," gives the 
result of his investigations as follows. 

" So conflicting are the authorities, that the number of troops 
engaged on either side cannot be precisely ascertained. ' The 
number of the Americans during the battle,' Colonel Swett says, 
' was fluctuating, but may be fairly estimated at three thousand 
five hundred, who joined in the battle, and five hundred more who 
covered the retreat.' General Putnam's estimate was two thou- 
sand two hundred. General Washington says, the number engaged 
at any one time, was one thousand five hundred, and this was 
adopted by Dr. Gordon. This is as near accuracy as can be arrived 
at. General Gage, in his official account states the British force 
at ' something over two thousand,' and yet the same account ac- 
knowledges one thousand and fifty-four killed and wounded. 
This certainly indicates a force far larger than two thousand. 
Neither British accounts, nor the British plans of the battle, 
mention all the regiments that were in the field. Thus, the 
movements of the second battalion of marines are not given ; yet 
the official table of loss states that it had seven killed and thirty 
wounded ; and Clarke, also, states it was not until after the Ame- 
ricans had retreated, that General Gage sent over this second 
battalion, with four regiments of foot, and a company of artillery, 
Americans, who counted the troops as they left the wharves in 
Boston, state that five thousand went over to Charlestown ; and, 
probably, not less than four thousand were actually engaged." 
pp. 190, 191. 

With much better reason than when he was treating 
of the 19th of April, Lord Mahon stoutly maintains that 
his countrymen were not beaten at Bunker Hill. 

" The Americans at that period — and some of them even to 
the present day — liave claimed the battle of Bunker's Hill as a 
victory. Yet considering that the British were left in possession 
of the ground and maintained it for several months to come, and 
considering also that, of six pieces of artillery which the Ame- 
ricans brought into action, they carried away but one, there can 
surely be no question that according to the rules of war they 
must be considered as defeated." Vol. vi, p. 88. 

Lord Mahon may have some authority in view with 
which we are not acquainted ; but when he shall quote 
the American writer of the present day, or of 1775, or of 
any day between the two, who has called the battle of 



33 

Bunker Hill a victory of the Americans in the common 
sense of that word, he will give us information which we 
are not prepared for. In its moral effect, it was so great 
an exploit as to be worth fifty common victories. It 
taught the New England people a little of what they 
could do against cannon and discipline ; and it taught the 
other colonies to rely on the New England people and on 
themselves. Had Prescott had a few more rounds of 
powder and ball, there is the best reason to believe that 
it would have been a magnificent American victory. It 
might, or it might not, have been followed by a victory, if 
General Ward had acceded to Prescott's urgent solicita- 
tion to return the next night, and retake the ground with 
all the advantage of his own intrenchments against him. 
But, as to the rest, after living, man and boy, almost 
within the shadow of Bunker Hill for more than half a 
century, we protest that we do not remember to have 
known it called an American victory, in speech or writing, 
by one of our countrymen. The English captain, Ham- 
ilton, in his entertaining work on " Men and Manners in 
America," appears to have thought that this battle was 
gained by General Washington. But we suppose that 
all American men, women, and children know as well 
that it was not gained by the Americans, as they know 
that General Washington neither won nor lost it. 

Lord Mahon has a happy way of drawing characters. 
But sometimes his portraitures lack completeness. Of 
Colonel Ethan Allen, of Vermont, the captor of Ticon- 
deroga, he says, — 

" He was not even a believer in the Christian Revelation, but 
composed a book against it, entitled ' Reason the only Oracle of 
Man.' The void left in his mind by religious truth was, as we 
have often seen it, filled by silly fancies. According to some of 
his biographers, he was wont to assure his friends that he ex- 
pected to return to this life, not indeed once more as a biped, but 
in the form of a ' large white horse!'" Vol. vi. p. GO. 

And for this anecdote he refers to Mr. Sparks's Life of 
Allen, in the American Biography. So far, so good. But 
Mr. Sparks introduces the story with the remark that 
" some of his (Allen's) biographers have not done him 
strict justice in regard to his religious opinions." And 



84 

then, having told the story, Mr. Sparks goes on to say, 
what if Lord Mahon had gone on to quote, he would 
have given his readers a better comprehension and a less 
unfavorable view of Allen's sentin:ients on the great sub- 
ject of religion. 

" If he was absurd and frivolous enough to say such a thing in 
conversation, he has certainly expressed very different sentiments 
in his writings. No person could declare more explicitly his 
belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, and a just 
retribution, than he has done in the following passage contained 
in this book. 

"' We should so far divest ourselves,' he observes, 'of the in- 
cumbrances of this world, which are too apt to engross our 
attention, as to acquire a consistent system of the knowledge of 
our duty, and make it our constant endeavor in life to act con- 
formably to it. The knowledge of the being, perfections, cre- 
ations, and providence of God, and the immortality of our souls, 
is the foundation of our religion.' Again, ' as true as mankind 
now exist and are endowed with reason and understanding, and 
have the power of agency and proficiency in moral good and evil, 
so true it is, that they must be ultimately rewarded or punished 
according to their respective merits or demerits ; and it is as true 
as this world exists, and rational and accountable beings inhabit 
it, that the distribution of justice therein is partial, unequal, and 
uncertain ; and it is consequently as true as that there is a God. 
that there must be a future state of existence, in which the dis- 
order, oppression, and viciousness which are acted and transacted 
by mankind in this life, shall be righteously adjusted, and thu 
delinquents suitably punished.'" Am. Biog. i. 351, 352. 

We have not space to discuss the vexed question of 
the paper currency, called Continental Money, issued by 
Congress during the war. Lord Mahon despatches it too 
easily. 

" Considering the subsequent extension of their national wealth, 
and the great pride which they have ever felt in the origin and 
event of their Revolutionary War, it might be supposed that all 
the obligations contracted in and for that war had been promptly 
and punctually discharged. This, however, has by no means been 
the case." Vol. vi. p. 62. 

Two hundred millions of dollars, in nominal value, 
were issued from time to time, within a period of six 
years. There was a great deficiency of other circulating 



35 

medium in the country, and for nearly two years this passed 
readily at par. It then began to depreciate, and continued 
to do so, while the necessities of Congress compelled 
them to make new emissions. These issues did not go 
into circulation at their nominal value, but at the rate 
of depreciation at which the currency stood in the market. 
It has been estimated that the actual value received 
by Congress for the nominal two hundred millions was 
not more than about thirty-six millions of silver dol- 
lars.* Lord Mahon tells a story (vi. 416) of a British 
officer of the Convention troops, who, in 1779, paid an 
innkeeper's bill of seven hundred and thirty-two pounds, 
with four guineas and a half in gold ; and a writer of that 
day, well informed on the subject, says that the circula- 
tion of the paper " was never more brisk and quick than 
when its exchange was five hundred to one." f In one 
point of view, the whole operation was of the nature of a 
tax, each person, through whose hands the money passed, 
parting with it again at a loss proportioned to the quan- 
tity he held, and the time he held it. 

Undoubtedly there were great hardships incident to this 
process ; but, as the currency circulated among the whole 
people, passing through the hands of rich and poor in pro- 
portion to the respective amounts of their purchases and 
sales, the losses were divided among them somewhat in 
proportion to their ability and liability to pay a tax. To 
redeem it in a way to remunerate the individuals who, 
in the gradual progress of depreciation, had sustained the 
losses, was obviously impossible ; and there certainly ap- 
peared great hardship, on the other hand, in paying the 
value borne on the face of the paper to a holder who had 
taken it at the rate of five hundred for one, when the 
payment would have to be made by a second tax on the 
same persons who had already been all but intolerably 
taxed through the very depreciation which was now to 
be made up. These are but hints. If Lord Mahon will 
look a little into the discussions of the subject which took 
place soon after, or if he will but read a letter written 
to the Count de Vergennes, in June, 1780, by John Adams, 
which he may find in the forthcoming seventh volume of 

* Jefferson's Works, i. 412. t Webster's Political Essays, p. 175. 

4 



36 

that great statesman's Works, he will own, if we mistake 
not, that the question is not so simple as to his quick mind 
it has appeared. 

Ethan Allen took the fort at Ticonderoga, May 10th, 
1775. On receiving intelligence of that event. Congress 
resolved. May 18th, that, "whereas there is indubitable 
evidence that a design is formed by the British ministry, 
of making a cruel invasion from the province of Quebec 
upon these colonies for the purpose of destroying our 
lives and liberties," and seeing that the cannon and stores 
at Ticonderoga would certainly be " used in the intended 
invasion of these colonies, this Congress earnestly recom- 
mend it to the cities and counties of New York and 
Albany immediately to cause the said cannon and stores 
to be removed from Ticonderoga to the south end of 
Lake George." And on the 1st of June it was further 
resolved that " no expedition or incursion ought to be un- 
dertaken or made by any colony or body of colonies 
against or into Canada." Yet, on the 27th of the same 
month. Congress instructed General Schuyler to repair 
without delay to Ticonderoga, and, " if he found it prac- 
ticable, and it would not be disagreeable to the Canadi- 
ans, immediately to take possession of St. John's and 
Montreal, and pursue any other measures in Canada 
which might have a tendency to promote the peace and 
security of these colonies." In view of these facts. Lord 
Mahon exclaims, — 

" Hai-d task to vindicate on this occasion either the good faith 
or the consistency of the American rulers ! Mr. Sparks attempts 
it, by pleading that in the interval between their two Resolutions 
they had received reports that General Carleton was preparing 
an invasion against themselves. But the apologist forgets that, 
even some days previous to their Resolution of the 1st of June, 
they had in the most solemn manner declared themselves in pos- 
session of 'indubitable evidence' that such an invasion was de- 
signed." Vol. vi. p. 115. 

" Hard task to vindicate," &c.! Why so ? On the con- 
trary, does not the whole proceeding hang together like 
network? And is it not merely Lord Mahon's own 
careless reading of the resolutions on which he comments, 
that has drawn from him such an ungracious stricture ? 
By the terms of its preamble, which Lord Mahon over- 
looks when he comes to argue upon it, though he had 



37 

before quoted them correctly, (p. 92,) the resolution of 
May 18th was founded on alleged evidence of " a design 
formed by the British ministry, of making a cruel inva- 
sion," &c., a design which it might take months to mature, 
and which, in respect to the course of counteraction re- 
quired, was an exceedingly different thing from the actual 
commencement of operations on the frontier by the Go- 
vernor of Canada. Between the 1st and the 27th of June, 
a Committee at Albany sent information to Congress that 
" General Carleton was fortifying St. John's, building 
boats, and preparing to make a descent on Lake Cham- 
plain, and attack Crown Point and Ticonderoga." Here 
was a pretty clear call for immediate action ; and accord- 
ingly, on the latter of these days, were despatched the 
orders to General Schuyler to make a counter invasion. 
" Hard task to vindicate on this occasion" the common 
sense "of the American rulers," if they had not altered 
their plans to conform to such altered circumstances! 

Lord Mahon thinks that the Marquis de Montcalm 
foretold the independence of the American States. 

" It liad been a saying of the Marquis de Montcalm, that our 
conquests along the St. Lawrence would hereafter lead to the 
sevei-ance of our own American colonies from the parent State, 
and that France would thus obtain a compensation for her loss." 
Vol. vi. p. 143. 

And in a note he adds, that " on the prediction of the 
Marquis de Montcalm, and on this whole branch of the 
subject," he " would refer the reader to that most able 
speech on colonial government, delivered by Lord John 
Russell in the House of Commons, February 8, 1850." 

" It had been a saying of the Marquis de Montcalm," 
&c. How does Lord Mahon know that? Not, we pre- 
sume, at second-hand from Lord John Russell's most able 
speech of February 8, 1850, which contains a mere pass- 
ing allusion to Montcalm's Letters,* but from those letters 
themselves. Has Lord Mahon seen that book ? If so, 
what does he think of it ? Has he attended to its history 
and its structure, which are, briefly, as follows : In the 
year 1777, — Montcalm having died in 1759, of his wound 



* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Vol. cviii. p. 5.38. 



38 

before Quebec, — there appeared in London this pamphlet, 
consisting of what purport to be letters written by Mont- 
calm to Messrs. De Berryer and De la Mole during his com- 
mand in Canada, and containing speculations on various 
topics, commercial, military, and political ; among which is 
expressed (p. 24) the opinion to which Lord Mahon refers. 
Soon after the publication of this pamphlet, in the course of 
a debate in Parliament on Lord Chatham's motion for an 
address to the king. Lord Shelburne declared that the letters 
"had been discovered to be a forgery;"* and, though 
Lord Mansfield insisted that they were "not spurious," f 
no attempt appears to have been made in any quarter to 
establish their genuineness. No explanation was given 
of the manner in which the letters were obtained from 
France. They are printed in French and English on 
opposite pages. Will Lord Mahon look at them and say 
whether he is prepared to pronounce that the French was 
the original, and the English the translation, instead of 
the opposite having been the fact ? As his Lordship, 
like a more famous English historian, began his literary 
career with a book in French, he should be a better judge 
of this matter than ourselves ; but, to our thinking, there 
are Anglicisms in the turns of phrase of the French copy, 
rather than Gallicisms in those of the English. The pro- 
phetical letter is dated " Camp before Quebec, Aug. 24, 
1759," in the critical part of the campaign, three weeks 
before the fatal battle. Perhaps Lord Mahon believes, — 
but we do not, — that it was with such communications 
to his Parisian friends that the French commander amused 
his leisure in the intervals between sending fire-ships into 
Wolfe's fleet and cannonading his camp across the Mont- 
morenci. 

After describing the evacuation of Boston, in March, 
1776, Lord Mahon proceeds to say : — 

" The Congress voted that in commemoration of this great 
event there should be struck a medal in gold and bronze ; and 
it was struck accordingly, not indeed for lack of an artist in Ame- 
rica, but by their direction, in France." Vol. vi. p. 128. 

The history of the medal is of no great consequence. 

* Parliamentary Register, Vol. vii. p. 122. t Ibid. p. 127. 



39 

But, if told, it is as well to have it told correctly. The 
votes simply were, first, one of thanks to Washington and 
the troops under his command, and then " that a medal of 
gold be struck in commemoration of this great event, and 
presented to his Excellency." * Nothing is said of bronze, 
or of the place at which the medal should be made. 
Eleven medals were voted by Congress to officers who 
had distinguished themselves in different actions during 
the war, but in no instance was it directed that they 
should be struck in France. On the 6th of July, 1779, 
Congress voted "that the Board of the Treasury cause 
the medals in honor of the commander-in-chief and 
other officers of the United States, to be struck without 
delay." Much delay, however, still followed ; the medals 
for Washington, Gates, Greene, and several other officers, 
were not procured till four years after the signature of 
the treaty of peace. They were all executed in Paris, 
for the good reason that they could be done there in much 
better style than was at that time possible in the United 
States. Lord Mahon does more than justice to the claims 
of American art in the last century.f 

In connection with the account of operations on Long 
Island, in 1776, we find the following astonishing sen- 
tence. 

" The command of this important post was intrusted by Wash- 
ington to General Greene, an officer of bravery and enterprise, 
but of intemperate habits." Vol. vi. p. 164. 

When Lord Mahon knows the wrong he has done to 
the memory of an illustrious and blameless man, he will 
feel more pain than we feel in recording it. After Wash- 
ington, there is no military worthy, of the revolutionary 
age, whom this country remembers with such veneration 
as Greene. No whisper of such a charge as this was 
ever before heard against him. Nothing of the sort can 
be better known than that it is utterly without founda- 
tion. Lord Mahon quotes La Fayette in support of his 
assertion. 



*= Journals of Congress, Vol. ii. pp. 108, 109. 

t The story of the procuring of all the medals in France is told in a letter 
of Colonel Humphreys, of November, 1787, published in the American Mu- 
seum, Vol. ii. p. 493. 

4* 



40 

" Greene, un general souvent ivre. These are the "words of 
La Fayette ; Mem. et Corresp. vol. i. p. 21, ed. 1837." Ibid. 

But he quotes La Fayette incorrectly, and misunder- 
stands him. La Fayette's words were these, according 
to the copy of his " Memoii'e, Correspondance^^ &c. which 
lies before us. 

" Lord Stirling, plus brave que judicieux, un autre general 
souvent ivre, Greene, dont les talents n'etoient encore connus que 
de ses amis, commandoient en qualite de Major-generaux." Tome 
i. p. 21. 

Who the second general was, who was " often drunk," 
is no secret. He was soon dismissed from the army for 
misconduct at the battle of Germantown, occasioned by 
his bad habit. But it is enough for us that it was 
not Greene, of whom La Fayette's whole description is 
that " his talents were as yet only known to his friends." 
La Fayette knew already and admired them, and the 
modest and noble character which they adorned ; and 
continued to do so more and more. In this reference 
Lord Mahon has but committed a singular negligence. 
But what is to be thought of the knowledge of an histo- 
rian, writing upon the American Revolution so much in 
the dark as to make it possible for him to pass by Gene- 
ral Greene as " an officer of bravery and enterprise, but 
of intemperate habits ? " When one page represents 
Greene as a sot, one would scarcely be surprised to find 
the next declaring that Jefferson was an idiot. 

Lord Mahon refers, without positively adopting it, to 
the story told by Mr. Adolphus, (ii. 440,) on the authority 
of " private information," of Washington's having received 
from Benedict Arnold, on a visit of that officer to head- 
quarters, the first suggestion of "the idea of attempting to 
recross the Delaware, and surprise some part of the King's 
troops." * Arnold arrived in camp a week before that ex- 
ploit. But, several days before he came, Washington had 
written to Governor Trumbull that he meditated " a stroke 
upon the forces of the enemy, who," he adds, " lie a good 
deal scattered, and, to all appearance, in a state of secu- 
rity." f In fact, the importance of such an attempt seems 

* Vol. vi. p. 195. t Sparks's Washington^ Vol. iv. p. 541. 



41 

now so obvious, that it may reasonably be supposed to 
have occupied his thoughts from the time he crossed the 
Delaware in his retreat. We suppose that the author is 
equally in error in attributing to Arnold the original con- 
ception of " the daring and skilful scheme " of the expe- 
dition from Cambridge through the wilderness to Quebec* 
Washington's correspondence indicates nothing of the 
kind. September 21st, he wrote, " I am now to inform 
the honorable Congress that, encouraged by the repeated 
declarations of the Canadians and Indians, and urged by 
their request, I have detached Colonel Arnold," &c.f The 
plan was matured about the middle of August, between 
the commander-in-chief and several members of Congress, 
who were then in camp, during a short adjournment of 
that body. 

Of La Fayette Lord Mahon speaks in the offensive 
terms common with the writers of his school, when re- 
ferring to that illustrious man. :|: We cannot go into 
a survey of the life of La Fayette or into a vindication 
of his course through a long, varied, and eminent ca- 
reer. We formerly treated these subjects at length, down 
to the time of his visit to this country in 1824.§ But we 
must not omit to say, that, in the part which he took in 
the American war, he acquitted himself with uniform 
discretion, fidelity, courage, and honor. Considering his 
youth and inexperience (he was not yet twenty years old 
when he was appointed a major-general in the American 
army), considering that he was acting with and upon a 
people of different country, language, and habits, there 
are few examples indeed on record of such success as his 
in discharging the duties of a high station, and winning 
universal confidence and esteem. He was always placed 
in as high command as his rank would permit ; he com- 
mitted no mistakes ; he failed on no occasion to obtain 
the cordial approbation of his superiors and of the coun- 
try. " As a general, it can scarcely be pretended," says 
Lord Mahon, " that his exploits were either many or con- 
siderable." What does his Lordship think, on reflection, 



* Vol. vi. p. 116. t Sparks's Washington, Vol. iii. p. 102. 

t Vol. vi p. 231. § N. A. Keview. Vol. xx. p. 147, et seq. 



42 

of the wisdom of that remark ? In the course of his 
historical studies, how many generals has he found, in 
any time, who have performed " exploits either many or 
considerable," in proportion to those who have done their 
duty, and served their country well ? Meritorious con- 
duct, his Lordship knows, is a thing that does not de- 
pend on fortune. Brilliant achievement is a thing that 
partly does depend upon it. La Fayette's "exploits" 
were equal to his opportunities. He proved himself 
a brave, discreet, sagacious, energetic oihcer. In com- 
mand of the American forces in the Virginia campaign 
of 1781, he had the dexterity to foil the tactics of Lord 
Cornwallis, who had written home, " The boy cannot 
escape me," * and to push that officer with his army of 
seven or eight thousand men into the trap of the fortified 
lines of Yorktown, where they laid down their arms, and 
virtually closed the war. His character and his military 
talents always commanded the respect and confidence of 
Washington, never lightly given ; and at the peace, he 
retired from the army and the country universally beloved. 
Referring to Sir Henry Clinton's expedition up the 
Hudson in the autumn of 1777, with a view to forming 
a junction with Burgoyne, Lord Mahon says, — 

" So important was this diversion of Clinton, that, could it have 
taken place only one week or ten days sooner, — could the tid- 
ings of it have reached Burgoyne at any time, he says, between 
the two actions on Behmus's Heights, — it was the deliberate 
opinion of that officer, formed after the event, that he Avould 
have been enabled to make his Avay to Albany, and that final 
success would therefore have attended his campaign." Vol. vi. 
p. 281. 

General Burgoyne, in his " Narrative," (p. 17,) expressed 
that opinion, which, under his circumstances, it was not 
unnatural for him to entertain. It was against all proba- 
bility, however. He capitulated nine days after the se- 
cond battle of Behmus's Heights, at which time, according 
to Lord Mahon,! his force was reduced to 3500 effective 
men, and his provisions were nearly exhausted, while the 
American army under Gates numbered 13,000 men, well 
supplied. If the comparatively small detachment, sent up 

* Gordon, Vol. iv. p. 111. t Vol. vi. p. 286. 



43 

the Hudson by General Clinton, which was engaged in 
burning Kingston at the time of Burgoyne's capitulation, 
had been ten days earlier in its movement, and had con- 
trived to effect a landing near Albany, it is to the last 
degree improbable that it would have been able to pene- 
trate through the force which would have been collected in 
that city and the adjacent country, so as to form a junc- 
tion with Burgoyne. 

It is a mistake that " General Schuyler, on being re- 
moved from his command by Congress, had continued to 
serve as a volunteer in Gates's army," (p. 285.) He felt 
the injustice of being superseded by an officer inferior in 
rank, and, immediately on surrendering the command to 
Gates, retired to Albany, where he remained till after the 
capitulation. In fact, this important campaign is, in va- 
rious parts, imperfectly described. The defeat of St. 
Leger at Fort Stanwix is barely mentioned,* and the 
brilliant exploit of Colonel Brown before Ticonderoga, in 
September, when he captured three hundred men, and libe- 
rated a hundred American prisoners,! is not mentioned 
at all, though both were events which materially contri- 
buted to the failure of Burgoyne's expedition. The fol- 
lowing imputation demands much more serious rebuke : 

" General Gates was found willing to recede from his first 

pretensions. He rightly judged it unwise to drive to utter despair 
even a far inferior number of brave and disciplined troops. He 
felt that the capitulation of such troops on almost any terms, and 
under almost any circumstances, would be a most solid advantage, 
and would shed on the arms of the United States a lustre which 
as yet they had never known. Judging from the event, I am 
justified in saying, that another motive also may perhaps have 
weighed with some, at least, of the Americans. It matters little 
what terms are granted, if it be not intended to fulfil them ! " 
Vol. vi. p. 278. 

Such a reflection on the integrity of the American 
officers who assented to the capitulation, is gross. The 
delay in its execution on the part of Congress we shall 
not undertake to defend. Congress was exasperated by 

* Vol. vi. p. 259. 

t See Marshall's Waslwu/ton, Vol. iii. pp. 279, 2S0; Vi'illiams's Histortf of 
Vermont, Vol. ii. pp. 135, 136. 



44 

the perfidy of the British commander in the then recent 
affair of St. Leger. And we could quote officers of the 
most unblemished honor, who lived and died in the opi- 
nion that the Convention from the first was void for mate- 
rial fraud on the part of the defeated party. But we have 
not met with evidence to that point which completely 
satisfies our minds.* We think there was misconduct, — 
we fear there was bad faith, — in relation to the treat- 
ment of the Convention troops. But, whatever it was, 
the responsibility rests on Congress alone. General Gates 
and his officers had nothing whatever to do with it. 

Lord Mahon does generous justice to the hospitality 
shown by the New York people to the Convention troops, 
and then proceeds : — 

" But on entering Massachusetts the scene was wholly changed. 
There rancor against the Royalists seemed to have absorbed 
every other feeling. It is stated by Madame de Riedesel, that 
whenever she jiassed in the streets of Boston the female part of 
the population cast upon her angry looks, and, in sign of their 
disdain, spat on the ground before her. A far worse token of 
their rancor is recorded by the same authority. There was a 
Captain Fenton, of their town, who had gone to England, but 
had left behind his wife and daughter, the last a beautiful girl of 
fifteen. At the news that Captain Fenton continued faithful to 
the King, some women of the lower orders seized on these un- 
happy ladies, tore off their clothes, and tarred and feathered them, 
in which condition they were dragged as a show around the town ! " 
Vol. vi. pp. 294, 295. 

The first part of this we profess ourselves unable to 
understand. Forms of insult are conventional. Pulling 
the nose, for instance, has, among men, a very serious as- 
sociated significance of this description, though it would 
be impossible to show that, abstractly, it is stiited to 
convey any meaning of the kind, more than squeezing the 
hand. Now expectorating on the ground before a per- 

* December 3d, Gates -wrote to the President of Congress, " Respecting 
the standards, General Burgoyne declared upon his honor, that the colors of 
the regiments were left in Canada." (Gordon, Vol. iii. p. 46.) But the 
Baroness de Riedesel boasts {Letters and Memoirs, p. 200,) of the address 
■with which she got off the colors of the German regiments, by having them 
quilted into a mattress. Madame de Riedesel's book, however, was not pub- 
lished till 1800. 



45 

son is not an American expression of anger or contempt. 
We never saw or heard of its being done with this de- 
sign. Inns, streets, steamboats, even the carpeted Halls 
of Congress would be perpetual Aceldamas, if this were 
the recognized interpretation of that act. Quite as much 
are we confounded by the specification of the act itself; 
for, culpable as the male American must be owned to be 
in regard to it, our fair countrywomen are blameless 
of all share in so gross a habit. As authority, however, 
for this and the other story in the above extract, the 
reader is referred to the Baroness Riedesel's Dienst-Reise, 
(ss. 192 - 202. edit. 1801.) The reader will do well to turn 
to the volume accordingly, which was published in a trans- 
lation, in New York, twenty-five years ago, and therein 
he will find it thus written. 

" Boston is quite a fine city, but the inhabitants were outrage- 
ously patriotic There Avere among tlieni many wicked people ; 
and the persons of my own sex were the worst : they gazed at 
me with indignation, and spit Avhen I passed near them. Mrs. 
Carter resembled her parents in mildness and goodness of heart ; 
but her husband was revengeful and false. They came often to 
see us, and dined with us and in company of our generals. We 
endeavored, by all means, to show them our gratitude ; and they 
seemed to feel much friendship for us ; though, at the same time, 
this wicked Mr. Carter, in consequence of General HoAve's hav- 
ing burnt several villages and small towns, suggested to his coun- 
trymen to cut off our generals' heads, to pickle them, and to put 
them in small barrels ; and as often as the English should again 
burn a village, to send them one of these barrels ; — but that 
cruel plan was not adopted. 

" I had, during my residence at Bristol, in England, made the 
acquaintance of a Captain Fenton." Letters and Ilemoirs, 
p. 190. 

And then follows the anecdote of the tarring and 
feathering of the wife and daughter of Captain Fenton. 
If Lord Mahon thought the stories of the spitting be- 
fore the Baroness de Riedesel, and the outrage on the two 
other ladies, worthy of credit and preservation, why not 
equally that of the proposal to pickle and barrel up the 
heads of British generals, which stands between them 
on the record ? The Baroness de Riedesel was a lady de- 
serving all credit when she tells what she has seen, 



46 

though she may have put a wrong construction upon it. 
But the case is not exactly the same as to every thing 
which she may have heard. Perhaps she did not under- 
stand English perfectly well. And perhaps her readiness 
to believe may have been abused by that " wicked Mr. 
Carter." If so, Mr. Carter was greatly to blame. But 
his fault was of a different degree from that of packing 
British generals' heads in casks, or maltreating loyalist 
females. 

" There [in Massachusetts] rancor against the royalists 
seemed to have absorbed every other feeling." Party 
spirit undoubtedly ran very high. How could it be other- 
wise, when, on the one hand, liberty and life were at stake, 
— on the other, rank, fortune, and home ? Madame de 
Riedesel was the wife of a person engaged in one of the 
most nefarious occupations that human mind and muscle 
can be put to. He and his had no quarrel with us and 
ours ; but he had been let out for hire by the wretch called 
Elector of Hesse Cassel, to come hither and make our 
wives and children widows and fatherless. If he could 
come on such a business, it was very fit that his wife 
should come with him. Heaven knows he stood enough 
in need of every solace of domestic love. He failed in what 
he came for. He sold his own blood, and not ours. We 
caught him and his attendant reptiles, and drew their 
fangs. If women whose husbands, fathers, sons, he 
would have butchered, perhaps had butchered, spat on 
the ground in sign of anger, as his wife passed, it was a 
very unfeminine, discourteous, indecent act, though it 
was evidently an affront designed for him rather than for 
her ; and something may perhaps be pardoned to the rage 
of those against whom injuries so enormous, so wicked, 
so unprovoked had been committed, or had only failed of 
being committed because God's providence and man's 
valor dashed the miscreants to the earth in the flush of 
their abominable enterprise.* Burgoyne's troops had also 



* We speak no worse of these ruffians than did the friends of America 
and humanity at the time, in England. " We had," said Lord Chatham, in 
debate, on the 5th of December, 1777, " swept every corner of Germany for 
men ; we had searched the darkest wilds of Ameiica for the scalping-knife ; 
but, those bloody measures being as weak as they were wicked, he recom- 
mended that instant orders might be sent to call home the first, and disband 



4T 

something to blame themselves for, for any inhospitality 
in respect to their reception in Massachusetts. Gordon, 
himself an Englishman, and at that time in Massachu- 
setts, says, " While upon their march to the neighborhood 
of Boston, the British behaved with such insolence as 
confirmed the country in their determination never to sub- 
mit The Germans stole and robbed the houses 

as they came along, of clothing and every thing on which 
they could lay their hands, to a large amount." * Hired 
stabbers as long as they were in arms, house thieves as 
soon as they were beaten, they had nothing better to claim, 
at the hands of meekness itself, than mere forbearance and 
humanity. 

But, after all, Madame de Riedesel had not much to 
complain of, in her stay in Massachusetts. Massachu- 
setts did not put her in fear, or even in Coventry. She 
testifies that her household " passed their time in Cam- 
bridge [it was a year] quietly and happily." They occu- 
pied a spacious mansion, one of the most agreeable resi- 
dences in the neighborhood of Boston. The Baroness 
gave frequent dinner parties, balls, and fetes. At one of 
her balls, she says, — 

" "We bad an excellent supper, to whicli more than eighty per- 
sons sat down. Our yard and garden were illuminated. The 
king's birth-day falling on the next day, it was resolved that the 
company should not separate before his Majesty's health was 
drank, which was done with feelings of the liveliest attachment 
to his person and to his interests. Never, I believe, was ' God 
save the king ' sung with more enthusiasm or with feelings more 
sincere. Our two eldest girls were brought into the room to see 
the illumination. We were all deeply moved, and proud to have 
the courage to display such sentiments in the midst of our ene- 
mies When our guests retired, the house was surrounded 

with people." Letters and Memoirs, p. 199. 

The police of Cambridge could not have been very 
rigorous, nor the patriotic mob very intolerant. 

Having spoken of the dissatisfaction occasioned to the 
Americans by Count D'Estaing's sailing with his squad- 

the other ; foi- peace, he was certain, would never be effected, as long as the 
German bayonet and Indian scalping-knifc were threatened to be bnricd in 
the bowels of our American brethren." See Correspondence of ]Villiam Pitt, 
^•c. Vol. iv. p. 474, 475. 
* Vol. iii. p. 44. 
5 



48 

ron for the West Indies in November, 1778, Lord Mahon 
proceeds : — 

" They had formed the most sanguine hopes from the French 
alliance. They had found that alliance as yet little better than 
a name. Moreover, just before the departure of D'Estaing, he 
had given them another valid reason for displeasure. He had 
issued a proclamation to the people of Canada, inviting, though in 
guarded terms, their return to the sway of their former sovereign. 
It need scarcely be observed, that such views were most directly 
repugnant to the terms of the treaty signed only nine months be- 
fore." Vol. vi. pp. 384, 385. 

As we read D'Estaing's proclamation, it admits of no 
such construction. Having argued in full the reasons 
urging the Canadians to take part with the Americans 
against the English, it concludes as follows: " I will not 
attempt to convince a whole people, for a whole people, 
when they acquire the right to think and act, know their 
own interest, that to connect themselves [se lier] with the 
United States is to secure their happiness ; but I will 
declare, as I now formally do, in the name of his Majesty, 
who has given me authority and instructions to that 
effect, that all his former subjects in North America, who 
will no longer recognize the supremacy of England, may 
rely on his protection and support."* What is this but 
to say, that, during the contest, they would have the pro- 
tection and support of France acting in concert with the 
United States? There is nothing in the language to 
justify its being interpreted as an invitation to " re- 
turn to the sway of their former sovereign." The Ameri- 
cans conceived no resentment or jealousy on account of 
this declaration. It would have been absurd for them to 
do so. " Valid reason for displeasure " in it there was 
none, nor a particle of repugnance " to the terms of the 
treaty, signed only nine months before." By the sixth 
article of that treaty,! the king of France " renounces the 
possession of any part of the continent of North Ame- 
rica, which, before the treaty of Paris in 1763, or in virtue 
of that treaty, were acknowledged to belong to the crown 



* See Annual Register, for 1779, p. 355. f Secret Journal, Vol. ii. p. 85. 



49 

of Great Britain ; " and by the fifth article, it was pro- 
vided that any territory conquered by the United States 
in the northern parts of America should " be confederated 
with, or dependent upon, the said States." These stipu- 
lations were strictly and faithfully adhered to by the 
French government throughout the war. If they never 
lent direct aid to the American invasions of Canada, 
neither did they throw any obstacles in the way of the 
execution of those plans; still less did they take any 
steps whatever to secure Canada for themselves. In fact, 
they had had quite enough of it in the w^ar of 1758, even 
if there had been no considerations of good faith with 
their allies.* 

Lord Mahon has his doubts respecting the extent of 
the feeling in favor of independent and republican insti- 
tutions, after the Declaration of Independence. 

"In tracing the measures of Congress at this juncture, it is to 
be observed that while most of the members were warm and 
zealous in prosecution of the war, there was not wanting a minor- 
ity inclined to absolute and unconditional submission. So much 
danger would have been incurred by a manifestation of such 
views, that we cannot expect to find them in any manner clearly 
or explicitly avowed. But that such a party did exist at Phila- 
delphia, and that in numbers it was considerable, is recorded by 
most unimpeachable authority ; by the Adjutant-General of the 
American army, himself a Philadelphian, and connected with all 
the chief houses of that city. Few things, indeed, are more re- 
markable than the lingering attachment to kingly government 
which may be traced in these insurgent colonies. So strong was 
this feeling that, even when every hope was relinquished of re- 
turning to the sway of King George, there were some persons 
who in their stead turned their thoughts to the Pretender — to 
the Prince Charles of ' The Forty-five.' Some letters to invite 
him over, and to assure him of allegiance, were addressed to him 
from Boston at the very commencement of the contest. Thus, 
also, Mr. Washington Irving was assured by Sir Walter Scott, 
that among the Stuart Papers which Sir Walter had examined at 
Carlton House, he had found a Memorial to Prince Charles from 
some adherents in America, dated 1778, and proposing to set up 
his standard in the back settlements. These men were not, and 
could not be, aware of the broken health and degraded habits 

* On this subject, see Sparks's Life ofGouverneur Morris, Vol. i. pp. 189, 190. 



50 

into which their hero had fliUen. They did not, they could not, 
know the details of his domestic life at Florence. But such was 
still their reverence for Royalty, that they desired to cling to it 
even where it might be only the shadow of a shade." Vol. vi. 
pp. 184, 185. 

Mr. Washington Irving's testimony is incontestable, as 
far as it goes. He says that Walter Scott acquainted 
him with the contents of a paper in the Stuart collection, 
which paper is not now to be found, so that the accuracy 
of Sir Walter's recollection cannot be verified. Suppos- 
ing it accurate, what did Sir Walter say ? That " he 
had found a memorial to Prince Charles from some ad- 
herents in America, dated 1778, and proposing to set up 
his standard in the back settlements." Where were the 
"back settlements"? Boston was not one of them. 
More front settlement than Boston, there was none. In 
Boston, probably, there were not at that time fifty Catho- 
lics, nor probably was there any part of the British do- 
minions where the aversion to that religion was more in- 
tense. It is just as credible that the Bostonians, or 
enough of them to make any figure in a joint letter, 
should have sent for the Grand Lama to rule over them, 
as that they should have called in Prince Charles Edward. 
Boston being, through the whole early history, the princi- 
pal English place known to the French on this continent, 
their common name for Anglo-Americans was Boston- 
nais. When Duten quoted the Abbe Fabroni as having 
seen " letters from Americans of Boston to the Pretender, 
inviting him to place himself at their head," we presume 
that by " Americans of Boston " is to be understood 
men of British America. The letters which Fabroni had 
seen were probably the same as those afterwards in the 
hands of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter's invited the 
Pretender " to set up his standard in the back settle- 
ments." In 1778, there were "back settlements" under 
the English flag, but consisting mainly of French Catho- 
lics, as the posts of St. Louis, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. 
Vincents, and others, afterwards taken by George Rogers 
Clark. Till further informed, we shall strongly incline to 
the opinion that it was from settlements of this descrip- 
tion that the invitation was sent to the grandson of James 
the Second. It is a curious passage in history, and Lord 
Mahon will do a service by elucidating it further. 



51 

And, in connection with the last extract, we remark that 
he is certainly in error, though it is an error which he shares 
with most British writers, in his estimate of the number 
and influence of the American Royalists. AVhile they 
were more or less numerous in different provinces, — 
large, for instance, in New York, and small in Massachu- 
setts, — the fact is, that taken in the aggregate, and com- 
pared with the whole population, the number was at all 
times very small. At first, it consisted mainly of crown 
officers, their dependents and adherents, a few native 
English " Church and King" men, and a few men of pro- 
perty, conservatives in grain, who preferred tranquil times 
under the old government to the hazards and discomforts 
of a revolution. Afterwards, wherever the British army 
marched or was stationed, it was not unnatural that 
many of the inhabitants, seeking only quiet and safety in 
their homes, should, for the time being, maintain friendly 
relations with the invaders. And this was the case, to a 
considerable extent, particularly in Pennsylvania and the 
Southern States. But, on the whole, throughout the 
country, the men of talent, of education, and of the great- 
est weight of character, with few exceptions, rallied in a 
body in opposition to the measures of the British Parlia- 
ment. Hutchinson was a crown officer, and left the 
country in that capacity. Of men not holding office 
under the crown, there was but one American that had 
made any figure in public life, — Galloway, of Pennsyl- 
vania, — who withdrew from the patriot cause, and placed 
himself under the king's protection. Only about a thou- 
sand left Massachusetts when Sir William Howe was 
driven from Boston, in 1776. As a party, acting in con- 
cert, the Royalists effected nothing. They were not of 
consequence enough for any show of influence on the pub- 
lic counsels after the first year of the war. For some testi- 
mony on this subject, to which he will allow great 
weight, we refer Lord Mahon to John Adams's letters in 
October, 1780, to the Amsterdam lawyer, Mr. Calkoen, in 
the forthcoming seventh volume of that statesman's writ- 
ings ; particularly the second, fifth, and seventh letters of 
the series. 

Connected with this mistake of fact is another of opi- 
nion. Lord Mahon thinks, that, if Lord Chatham had 



52 

lived to take the helm of public affairs, to which all cir- 
cumstances were inviting him in the year 1778, and had 
attempted, as he would have done, " to regain the affec- 
tions while refusing the independence of America," the 
undertaking would not have been hopeless, (p. 343.) 
Lord Mahon will undoubtedly abandon this opinion as 
soon as he shall have read the journals of Congress of 
that period, or run over the proceedings of the assemblies 
of the several States, or pursued any other course of 
inquiry suitable to acquaint him with what was at this 
time the sentiment and spirit of the whole people of the 
United Colonies. Just before, the British Ministry had 
sent out conciliatory bills, yielding almost every thing 
except independence. And how did Congress receive 
them ? With a unanimous vote, " that these United 
States cannot with propriety hold any conference or 
treaty with any commissioners on the part of Great Bri- 
tain, unless they shall, as a preliminary thereto, either 
withdraw their fleets and armies, or else, in positive and 
express terms, acknowledge the independence of the said 
States." * This vote was passed before so much as an 
intimation of the conclusion of the French alliance had 
been received. Congress was equally decided two years 
before, when proposals for an accommodation were pre- 
sented from the Ministry by Lord Howe. In short, who- 
ever supposes that Congress could have been induced to 
make peace at any time after the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, on the condition of going back to a colonial 
state, with any privileges and exemptions whatsoever, 
only shows himself quite too little acquainted with the 
invariable sentiments of that body. 

But, says Lord Mahon, (p. 345,) " the Provinces 
might, perhaps, have been inclined to control the delibe- 
rations, or even to cast off" the sway, of the central body, 
and make terms of peace for themselves." Than this 
there can be no wilder dream. From the organization 
of Congress till the end of the war, the Provinces, or the 
States, as they were called in America, uniformly and 
cordially acquiesced in its proceedings in relation to the 
parent country. There was no instance of a remon- 
strance, or of any formal expression of discontent w^ith 

* Journals of Congress, Vol. iv. p. 233. 



53 

the doings of Congress, from the Assembly of a State, or 
any association of individuals. Never was a disposition 
shown to interfere through separate action, orto presslocal 
interests. With a federal government as feeble and in- 
compact as well could be, the deficiency was well sup- 
plied by a strenuous unanimity of sentiment. 

On this point, of the possibility of recalling the Colo- 
nies to their allegiance, there can be no sort of doubt 
that Lord Chatham was in error. So far he did not 
understand the spirit of their people. His great mind 
had been in eclipse during part of the time, while the 
feeling of opposition in America had been maturing. 
He had lost the bearings of the ship ; winds and tides 
had carried it out of his reckoning. When we add to 
this the uncompromising character of the man, and the 
invincible repugnance which he may naturally have felt 
to see the American empire dismembered, which his bril- 
liant administration had established on so magnificent a 
footing, we are in some condition to understand his per- 
tinacity. Lord Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond 
comprehended better the conditions and exigencies of the 
time, in respect to American affairs. After the capture 
of Burgoyne's army, in September, 1777, Lord Rocking- 
ham and his friends had the discernment to see that the 
conquest of America was desperate ; and they adopted 
the manly and patriotic part of avowing that conviction 
in Parliament, and urging the adoption of a policy con- 
formable thereto.* It has lately become known, what 
had not been unsuspected, that Lord North entertained the 
same views, but was borne along in his fatal course by a 
principle of honor, which compelled him to lend himself 
to the obstinacy of the king.f Had the advice of the 
Marquis of Rockingham and his friends been taken after 
the capture of Burgoyne, it would have saved Great Bri- 
tain five years of costly, discreditable, and unprofitable 

* See the debate in the House of Lords on the motion for adjournment, 
December 11th, 1777; and in Committee, April 7th, 1778; and those in the 
House of Commons, February, 23 — March 2d, 1778. [Parliamentanj Register, 
Vols. viii. and x.) ; and speeches of Lord Chatham, and letters to and from 
him and Lord Rockingham, in December, 1777, and January and February, 
1778, in the Chatham Correspondence, Vol. iv. 

t See Sparks's Writings of Washington, Vol. vi. p. 531, &c., and the Ap- 
pendix to Lord Mahon's Vol. vi. pp. xxix. -xliii. for the letters of George 
the Third to Lord North. 



54 

war with these States. And there can be extremely- 
little doubt, that an accommodation with America at 
that juncture would also have averted the war with 
France and Spain, who would not have ventured upon 
a breach without the advantage of the hostilities then 
going on between Great Britain and her ancient Colo- 
nies. Lord Rockingham was a statesman of abilities much 
superior to what Lord Mahon represents them. Britain 
might have owed him much, had not she, or rather her 
monarch, been too perverse to hear his counsel. America 
owes him gratitude for his moderation and candor, as 
well as respect for his good sense. 

"We have borne our cordial testimony to Lord Mahon's 
general good nature. But there is a temptation which 
besets a person of that temper when he comes to put pen 
to paper, unless he be at the same time a quite self- 
relying man. It is that of being occasionally piquant, 
even at the expense of justice, in order to break and 
relieve a dead level of candor and complacency. Lord 
Mahon's Tory prejudices have partly dictated the direc- 
tion in which that seducing impulse should take effect. 

To Washington, as we have already said, he almost 
uniformly does hearty justice ; scarcely does George the 
Third command his reverence more ; though to us he 
greatly impairs the praise bestowed on Washington, by 
that supposition of his having been laggard in his coun- 
try's cause, which, perhaps, had some share in buying him 
the historian's favor. (Vol. v. p. 483.) The supposition 
is entirely unfounded. Washington was never impetu- 
ous, and, until he was forced into the most responsible 
public position, others claimed the public ear before him. 
But, from the first, he shared in the counsels of the Vir- 
ginia patriots, and took as early and resolute a part as 
any one of them against the usurpations of the British 
Ministry.* Lord Mahon, perhaps, does not know that 
the temporary prevalence, to some extent, of a different 
opinion, was owing to the publication, in 1776, in Lon- 
don and New York, of a collection of spurious letters, in 
which Washington was represented as expressing to his 

* See, on this subject, Life and Wrilings of Washington, Vol. i. p. IIG, et 
seq. 



55 

friends sentiments inconsistent with his public course, 
and condemning the Declaration of Independence and 
the rest of the bold policy of Congress. In this country, 
where his character was known, the fraud accomplished 
nothing ; the letters were set down for a forgery at once, 
as he, at a time of more leisure, declared them, under his 
own hand, to be. 

To New England, and especially to Massachusetts, 
the leading province. Lord Mahon is generally unjust to 
a painful degree. Of the ability and the services of the 
patriots of Massachusetts he has no notion ; at all events, 
he gives his readers none. James Otis he almost ignores. 
Samuel Adams he singles out for the repetition of a 
scandalous story, though on a sober second thought he 
takes it back in the Appendix.* John Hancock he com- 
memorates mainly as a smuggling merchant. (Vol. v. p. 
356.) James Bowdoin he despatches in a hasty period 
or two. Josiah Quincy, Jr., he does not know by name. 
Joseph Warren he knows, or rather misknows, as " the 
physician of Boston, who had lately become the Presi- 
dent of the Massachusetts Congress, and been raised (by 
his own authority, in fact,) to the rank of major-gene- 
ral," and who led " a large accession of force " to Bun- 
ker Hill. Than John Adams, no statesman was more 
important, to say the least, in the first two Continental 
Congresses. If Thomas Jefferson, more than any other 
man, was the author of the document The Declaration of 
Independence, of the Declaration of Independence as a 
measure, taking place at the time that it did, John 
Adams was the author, more than any other man. 
Scarcely less material were his diplomatic services pre- 
sently after in Europe. Yet Lord Mahon can treat of 
American politics down to 1780, and find John Adams's 
place of highest honor in the court-room, where he acted 
as counsel for Captain Preston ; a highly honorable act, 
no doubt, but scarcely of the same consideration as 



* We will help the author for his next edition, so far as to refer him for 
this story to Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Vol. iii. pp. 294, 295. 
Strange as it may seem, that his Lordship should never have seen a book on 
the period of which he treats, of such extreme importance, and one so pecu- 
liarly suited to his use, as maintaining the loyalist side, still we believe such 
to be the fact. 



56 

that of his great agency in redeeming the continent to 
freedom. 

" It is not to be supposed that the ferment in any other colo- 
nies of North America, — and in some there was, it may be said, 
no ferment at all, — bore any proportion to that in Massachu- 
setts In no other was there the same Cromwellian 

leaven at work." Vol. v. p. 3G1. 

Amen. Massachusetts was very prompt, resolute, and 
active, in asserting her chartered privileges and her un- 
chartered rights, in talkative town-meeting, solemn coun- 
cil-chamber, and, in good time, bloody field. Hinc illce 
lachrymcc. Massachusetts was very " Cromwellian," if 
Lord Mahon pleases. We have no sort of objection to 
the phrase. After a not un- Cromwellian fashion, she 
looked at things in various points of view ; she fasted 
and prayed, and meanwhile filled her magazines, and 
drilled her demure young yeomanry. Minding a lesson 
which was her own before it was Cromwell's, she trusted 
in God and kept her powder dry. 

Yet Massachusetts — ugly customer as she was, and 
more or less had always been, to the king — was at the 
same time without public spirit, and sordid. This charge 
Lord Mahon tries to sustain, (vol. vi. p. 122,) by extracts 
from private letters of Washington to Joseph Reed, in 
November and February, 1775, 1776, and from a letter 
to the President of Congress, in December, 1775. 

Heaven forbid that we should find fault with any 
strong expression of Washington's discontent and anx- 
iety at that dismal period ! Little money, scarcely any 
powder, difficult enlistments, inexperienced officers, troops 
impatient to be discharged, subordination to be intro- 
duced into an army of which the officers and privates 
were at home each other's equals, — his embarrassments 
were all but intolerable ; they would have been intolera- 
ble to any mind but such as his. His own responsibili- 
ties and difficulties were enough to occupy his thoughts. 
It was not for him to be thinking of excuses for others, 
but rather of stimulating them by censure, remonstrance, 
complaint. But impartial history may and ought to look 
a little at the other side. These troops, so reluctantly 
detained in camp, had left their homes unexpectedly in 



57 

early spring, and their absence had been prolonged into 
the depth of winter. Literally, in many instances, leav- 
ing the plough in the furrow and the steers yoked, they 
had come to the war on the signal of Concord battle ; and 
ploughing-time, sowing-time, harvest-time, had passed, 
while, scantily provided themselves, — so that Washing- 
ton found them " very deficient in necessary clothing," 
(vol. iii. p. 21,) — they were still distant from their unpro- 
vided families. We shall not maintain that many of 
them might not have shown more self-sacrifice than they 
did show, nor shall we deny that such a course would 
have been more to their honor. We could wish that every 
Massachusetts man had been a very Curtius in his self- 
devotion, though perhaps history has not often had to 
record more of the prevalence of a Curtius spirit than 
shone forth here in 1775. But, at all events, while the 
occasions for complaint on one side were most promi- 
nent when the conflict was flagrant, it is now time to 
allow their fair weight to the difliculties on the other. 
In his answer to the address of the Provincial Congress 
of Massachusetts, July 4th, 1775, Washington thought it 
not unfit to use the following language. 

" In exchanging the enjoyments of domestic life for the duties 
of my present honorable but arduous station, I only emulate the 
virtue and public spirit of the whole province of Massachusetts 
Bay, which, with a iirmuess and patriotism without example in 
modern history, has sacriticed all the comforts of social and poli- 
tical life, in support of the rights of mankind, and the welfare of 
our common country." Writings, Vol. iii. p. 14. 

In the same paper he very justly says, — 

" The course of human affairs forbids an expectation, that 
troops formed under such circumstances should at once possess 
the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans." Ibid. 

The difficulties which he thus reasonably anticipated, 
and which he afterwards experienced, he was not indis- 
posed to make allowances for. 

" This unhappy and devoted province has been so long in a 
state of anarchy, and the yoke of ministerial oppression has been 
laid so heavily on it, that great allowances are to be made for 
troops raised under such circumstances. The deficiency of num- 



58 

bers, cliecipline, and stores can only lend to this conclusion, tliat 
tbeir spirit has exceeded their strength." Vol. iii. p. 24. 

In November, there was so much impatience of longer 
detention that Washington found himself compelled to 
grant furloughs (vol. iii. p. 176) " to fifty at a time from 
each regiment ; " and it is at this period, under the vexa- 
tion arising from this cause, that Washington uses his 
severest language. No doubt, the state of things was 
perplexing, irritating, deplorable. It w^as enough to cre- 
ate all the displeasure that Washington felt. But, after 
all, what did the men want their furloughs for ? Not to 
take themselves out of the enemy's way, nor out of the 
way of an unprovided winter in camp. Washington 
himself answers that question. 

" One thousand five hundred at a time are to be absent on 
furlough, until all have gone home to visit and provide for their 
families." Yob iii. p. 189. 

A not unreasonable object to present itself, as winter 
came on, to husbands and fathers, who, in the last spring, 
had left their homes wipro7nptu, — though very unpropi- 
tious to the discipline of the army, annoying to its gene- 
ral, and hazardous to the public safety. And presently 
after, Washington felt better. The last quotation is from 
a letter of December 5. The militia were called in to 
supply the places of the men absent on furlough, and 
December lith, Washington wrote as follows : — 

" The militia are coming in fast. I am much pleased with the 
alacrity which the good people of this province, as well as those 
of New Hampshire, have shown upon this occasion." Vol. iii. 
p. 195. 

And again, just a week later : — 

" The returns of men enlisted since my last amount to about 
eighteen hundred, making in the whole seven thousand one hun- 
dred and forty. The militia that are come in, both from this 
province and New Hampshire, are very fine-looking men, and 
go through their duty with great alacrity. The despatch made, 
both by the people in marching and by the legislative powers in 
complying with my requisition, has given me infinite satisfac- 
tion." Vol. iii. pp. 205, 206. 

On the 7th of March, 1776, Washington informed the 



59 

President of Congress of that movement to take posses- 
sion of Dorchester Heights, which drove the British army 
from Boston. He says, — 

" It having been the general opinion, that the enemy would 
attempt to dislodge our people from the Heights, and force their 
works as soon as they were discovered, which probably might 
have brought on a general engagement, it was thought advisable 
that the honorable council* should be applied to, to order in the 
militia from the neighboring and adjacent towns. I wrote to 
them on the subject, which they most readily complied with ; 
and, in justice to the militia, I cannot but inform you that they 
came in at the appointed time, and manifested the greatest alert- 
ness, and determined resolution to act like men engaged in the 
cause of freedom." Vol. iii. p. 304. 

To Colonel Reed he wrote on the same day, — 

" Every thing had the appearance of a successful issue, if we 
had come to an engagement on that day. It Avas the 5th of 
March, [the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, so called,] 
which I recalled to their remembrance as a day never to be for- 
gotten. An engagement was fully expected, and I never saw 
spirits higher, or more ardor prevailing." Reed's Life and Cor- 
respondence, Vol. i. p. 169. 

Once more, acknowledging, on the 18th of April, the 
vote of thanks by Congress to his troops, Washington 
said, — 

" They were, indeed, at first ' a band of undisciplined husband- 
men,' but it is, under God, to their bravery and attention to their 
duty, that I am indebted for that success," &c. Writings, Vol. 
iii. p. 361. 

The hardships in camp required great exertions out of 
camp, and such exertions were made as do not indicate 
a penurious people. The usual sources of revenue were 
cut ofl^and Massachusetts was extremely poor; and as 
yet there was scarcely a new social organization, such as 
deserved to be called government. In December, the 
army was suffering for want of firewood and hay ; and 
the way in which provision was made illustrates the im- 
perfection of the fiscal machinery, as well as the public 
spirit which supplied its defects. 



* The Executive Council of Massachusetts. 
6 



60 

'•' The Assembly of Massachusetts undertook to supply these 
articles, by calling on the towns, within twenty miles of Boston, 
to furnish at stated times specific quantities, according to the 
population of each town and its distance from camp. This requi- 
sition was generally complied with by the selectmen and com- 
mittees of the towns, although it was issued only in the form of a 
recommendation, and the wants of the army were effectually 
relieved." Vol. iii. p. 190, note. 

It is a bitter and a cruel thing for any man to look 
back from these calm and abundant days, and say that the 
people of Massachusetts have ever been a parsimonious 
people when public exigencies required great expense. 
We can give but one example of the action of its village 
democracies before we pass from the topic, and we take 
that of the town of Concord, because the record of its 
doings lies at hand, and because we can present it in the 
language of R. Waldo Emerson, in his Centennial Dis- 
course fifteen years ago. Concord is fourteen or fifteen 
miles from Cambridge, where were then head-quarters. 
It was and is a very patriotic town, and we will not say 
that it did not do better than the average of other towns 
in the autumn of 1775. But here is what it did then, and 
through the war. 

"Its little population of 1300 souls behaved like a party to 
the contest. The number of its troops constantly in service is 
very great. Its pecuniary burdens are out of all proportion to 
its capital. The economy so rigid, which marked its earlier his- 
tory, has all vanished. It spends profusely, affectionately in the 
service. ' Since,' say the plaintive records, ' General Washington, 
at Cambridge, is not able to give but 24s. per cord for wood, for 
the army ; it is voted, that this town encourage the inhabitants to 
supply the army, by paying two dollars per cord, over and above 
the General's price, to such as shall carry wood thither ;' and 210 
cords of wood were carried. A similar order is taken respecting 
hay. Whilst Boston was occupied by the British troops. Concord 
contributed to the relief of the inhabitants £70 in money ; 225 
bushels of grain ; and a quantity of meat and wood. When, pre- 
sently, the poor of Boston were quartered by the Pi'ovincial Con- 
gress on the neighboring country. Concord received 82 persons 
to its hospitality. In the year 1775, it raised 100 minute-men 
and 74 soldiers to serve at Cambridge. In March, 1776, 145 
men were raised by this town to serve at Dorchester Heights. 
In June, the General Assembly of Massachusetts resolved to raise 
5000 militia, for six months, to reinforce the Continental army. 



61 

'The numbers,' say they, 'are large, but this court has the fullest 
assurance, that their brethren on this occasion, Avill not confer 
with flesh and blood, but will, without hesitation, and with the 
utmost alacrity and despatch, fill up the numbers proportioned to 
the several towns.' On that occasion, Concord furnished 67 men, 
paying them itself, at an expense of £622. And so on, with 
every levy, to the end of the war. For these men, it was con- 
tinually providing shoes, stockings, shirts, coats, blankets, and 
beef. The taxes, which, before the war, had not much exceeded 
£200 per annum, amounted, in the year 1782, to $9,544 in silver. 
The great expense of the war was borne with cheerfulness, whilst 
the war lasted ; but years passed, after the peace, before the debt 
was paid. As soon as danger and injury ceased, the people were 
left at leisure to consider their poverty and their debts. The 
town records show how slowly the inhabitants recovered from the 
strain of excessive exertion.' — pp. 37, 38." 

In Philip's war, the debt incurred by Plymouth exceeded 
the aggregate personal estate of all the inhabitants of the 
colony ; and she paid it, dollar for dollar. In one year of 
the French war of 1758 - 1763, Massachusetts taxed her- 
self thirty-six per cent, on the income from real, and sixty- 
six per cent, on the income from personal estate, besides 
several excises ; and more than one third of the effective 
men of the colony were in the field. At the time of the 
Boston Port Bill, Salem, Marblehead, and other seaboard 
towns, which the ministry hoped to bribe, with the spoils of 
Boston, to opposition to her policy, offered to receive the 
Boston ships, and load and unload them without charge. 
In the war of the Revolution, 298,134 men (231,971 con- 
tinental, 56,163 militia,) were at different times employed. 
Of these, the four New England States, including the 
little State of Rhode Island, furnished 147,373, only 1,694 
less than half of the whole number ; while the single 
State of Massachusetts furnished 83,262, or only 24,174 
less than half the aggregate number furnished by all the 
other twelve States, nearly 8000 more than half the num- 
ber furnished by the nine States out of New England, 
and between twice and three times as many as Virginia, 
the largest of those States, which sent 32,288 men to 
the war. At the same time, the excess of her payments 
into the common Treasury from 1775 to 1783, over and 
above what she drew from it, was greater than that of 



62 

the aggregate of her twelve sister States. No. Lord Ma- 
hon may depend upon it that he has fallen into an error, in 
taking Massachusetts for his example of halting or penu- 
rious public action. " Cromwellian," he is free to call 
her, without any denial from us; but the two descriptions 
do not agree together. 

In speaking of what is called Conway's cabal. Lord 
Mahon says, (vi. 367,) that Conway " leagued himself 
with several other ambitious officers and scheming mem- 
bers of Congress ; several, above all, from the New Eng- 
land States." No part of the country was more Wash- 
ing-tonian than New England was from first to last. She 
took the lead in Congress in selecting him to be commander- 
in-chief ; and throughout his life, military and civil, none 
of the States was more devoted to his virtues, his policy, 
and his glory. Massachusetts stood stiffly by him through 
his Presidency, when his own Virginia was averse or cold. 
Still if New England had any particular connection with 
Conway's plot,by all means let it be known; and let justice 
be done, though the sky fall. Mr. Sparks, after a thorough 
examination of the subject, in a note, which Lord Mahon 
describes as " well deserving of perusal," concludes that 
there was nothing of the kind. Without producing a 
particle of evidence or of argument to refute him, Lord 
Mahon, who perhaps has looked into Botta, says that 
Mr. Sparks seeks "to glide gently over the participation of 
the New England members." We appeal to any candid 
reader of Mr. Sparks's note to say, whether he does any 
thing of the kind ; whether, on the contrary, it is not 
a most upright and dispassionate investigation of a curi- 
ous historical problem, as well as thorough, so far as the 
extant materials permit. Mr. Sparks concludes his note 
of thirty-six closely printed octavo pages as follows : — 

" Some "writers have laid the charge heavily upon the New 
England members ; but this charge has been ably and conclu- 
sively refuted in Mr. Austin's Life of Gerry, where several inter- 
esting facts on the subject may be found. Others implicate the 
Southern members, but with no better evidence than conjecture. 
In truth it cannot be proved, nor is it probable, that any combina- 
tions unfavorable to the Commander-in-chief existed, either in the 
army or in Congress, which partook of local interests, or were 
sustained by the prejudices of any particular State or district of 
the Union." WashingtorCs Writings, Vol. v. p. 518. 



63 

" The biography of Mr. Elbridge Gerry," replies Lord 
Mahon, " seems to me wholly inconclusive, and to make 
{for an American book) one most singular blunder." What 
sleepiness is it, in which his Lordship dreams that the 
oversight of the author of Gerry's Life, in incidentally 
naming Philadelphia as the place of the session of Con- 
gress in November, 1777, when in fact Congress was 
sitting at York, is of any avail against the cogent argu- 
ment there presented respecting Conway's cabal ? * If Lord 
Mahon has any facts upon the subject, not known in this 
country, or not recorded by our writers, let him oblige 
and instruct us with them. But until he has done so, 
or has been at some pains to place the facts known to 
us in some new light, we will not say that his ex cathedra 
judgment on this point is impertinent, but we must say- 
that it is not weighty. 

Our readers have seen some proof that Lord Mahon is 
not eminently good at weighing authorities, or even suffi- 
ciently careful in his citations of them. It is painful to 
see how he sometimes disposes of such an authority as 
that of our learned countryman, Mr. Sparks, a writer to 
whom American history is much more indebted than to 
any other, for fruits of original research. He is not per- 
haps so sprightly a writer as Lord Mahon, but among quali- 
fications for historical composition there are several which 
rank higher than liveliness of style. The habit of accu- 
racy in investigation and in statement is one of them ; 
and in this great merit, as well as in others, Mr. Sparks 
excels, to a degree which makes Lord Mahon's flippant 
allusions to him a subject of mortification to such as wish 
well to his Lordship's fame. 

Of the Declaration of Independence, Lord Mahon says, 
(vi. 161,) that " it excited much less notice than might 
have been supposed." That measure had, however, been 
sufficiently long in progress not to take the public mind 
by surprise ; it produced no change, like a French Revo- 
lution, in the form of government or the condition of the 
people; — the revolution had taken place before, in the 
several States ; it scarcely raised anticipations, or intro- 



* Austin's Life of Gerry, Vol. i. pp. 232-245. 
6* 



64 

duced a policy, not already existing in full maturity. Un- 
der these circumstances, it appears to us that no greater 
excitement was reasonably to have been looked for than 
what the newspapers of the day show to have been actu- 
ally produced, which was certainly by no means small. 
But what irks us most in connection with this matter is, 
that as a qualifying circumstance, Lord Mahon takes 
occasion (vi. 161) to add, " Washington, however, in his 
public letter to Congress (unless Mr. Jared Sparks has 
improved this passage) says that the troops had testified 
' their warmest approbation.' " * " Unless Mr. Jared Sparks 
has improved this passage " ! Is it thus that self-respect- 
ing men, engaged in liberal pursuits, should speak of one 
another ? Neither this passage, nor any other, has Mr. 
Sparks improved in the manner that Lord Mahon ventures 
to imply. There is an old collection of Washington's " offi- 
cial letters " during the war, published while he was Presi- 
dent. The edition before us is the second, issued at Bos- 
ton in 1796. Lord Mahon knows the book, for he has 
quoted from it, (vi. 378,) and therein, (vol. i. p. 176,) the 
passage stands, word for word, as printed by Mr. Sparks. 
Thirty seconds' time would have sufficed to inform his 
Lordship whether he had a right to suppose it to be an 
improvement by that gentleman, and would have saved him 
from the discontent he will feel in reflecting upon so rash 
a sneer. 

After making an extract from one of Washington's 
letters, and referring to others relating to the detention of 
Burgoyne's troops by Congress, Lord Mahon says, — 

" How far Mr. Sparks may have eitlier garbled these passages 
or suppressed others, I know not. Mr. Adolphus says that 
Washington remonstrated with force and firmness against this 
national act of dishonoi'. {Hist. vol. iii. p. 99, edit. 1802.)" — 
Vol. vi. p. 299. 

We suppose that Mr. Adolphus was mistaken. He may 
have had evidence not known to us ; but, as at present ad- 
vised, we presume that Washington, whatever may have 
been his private opinion, never "remonstrated" to Congress 
against their measures in relation to this subject. It would 

* Writings, Vol. iii. p. 457. 



65 

have been contrary to his rule and practice. Will Lord 
Mahon get Mr. Adolphus's vouchers, and set us right as 
to that question ? But his Lordship " knows not how far 
Mr. Sparks may have either garbled these passages, or sup- 
pressed others." He might easily have known, however, 
as to one of them. He had only to turn to his copy of 
that manual, to which we have just referred as an ac- 
quaintance of his, and he would have found that pas- 
sage (vol. ii. p. 207,) in precisely the form in which it is 
printed by Mr. Sparks. The others, we presume, are from 
letters hitherto unpublished, except in Mr. Sparks's edition. 
Lord Mahon's not knowing whether they have been " gar- 
bled " would have been a more material fact, had he not 
declared himself to be equally unknowing in respect to 
the former, when knowledge concerning it was so clieaply 
to be had from a little book just laid by him upon his 
own shelves. 

Having quoted from the " Official Letters " some sen- 
tences in which Washington condemns the policy of pro- 
scriptive measures by which loyalist merchants and me- 
chanics would be driven from Philadelphia, Lord»Mahon 
adds, (vi. 878,) " Mr. Sparks has deemed it expedient to 
omit the letter containing these passages." No doubt of 
it. Mr. Sparks not only "deemed it expedient," but found 
it unavoidable, to omit several thousands of letters. The 
same feeble sort of implied complaint often occurs in 
these pleasant volumes, as if it were something discredit- 
able to Mr. Sparks that he did not print Washington's 
remains bodily, in forty or fifty volumes, instead of making 
such a selection from them as might be comprehended 
within eleven. If his Lordship will refresh his memory 
with the contents of his own preface to his edition of 
Lord Chesterfield's letters, he will own that reasons for 
such omissions do sometimes exist. 

Besides occasional petulances of this kind scattered 
through his sixth volume, Lord Mahon devotes to the 
work of our learned countryman a whole article in his 
Appendix. After some commendations of Mr. Sparks's 
work as " of great historical interest and importance," and 
of his "notes and illustrations" as "written not only 
with much ability, but in a spirit, on most points, of can- 
dor and fairness," Lord Mahon proceeds : — 



66 

" I am bound, however, not to conceal the opinion I have 
formed, that Mr. Sparks has printed no part of the correspond- 
ence precisely as Washington wrote it, but has greatly altered, 
and, as he thinks, corrected and embellished it." Vol. vi. p. iv. 

We have much allowance and charity for obiter dicta. 
But this is not one. Lord Mahon has formed an opinion. 
It is so clear, matured, and consequential, that he is 
"bound not to conceal" it. And it is this; "that Mr. 
Sparks has printed no part of the correspondence precisely 
as Washington wrote it." To arrive intelligently at that 
opinion, (relating as it does, by its terms, to every part,) 
one needs to have become acquainted, we will not say 
with the whole, but at least with a very large portion of 
that correspondence in the original, and to have observed 
constant deviations from it in the printed copy. This 
being so, what is Lord Mahon's opinion that Mr. Sparks 
has correctly printed " no part of the correspondence " 
good for ? His Lordship will answer that this is not 
what he meant. So we suppose. But then we must be 
allowed to ask. What is the authority of so sweeping an 
opinion* when he who utters it with such judicial stateli- 
ness is not at pains to understand himself enough to be 
able to announce his meaning with more precision ? 

But justice to an admirable national monument of the 
nation's greatest man, and to an eminent and most merit- 
orious American scholar, demands that we should look 
more closely at the question thus presented. Fourteen 
years ago, four years or more after the completion of Mr. 
Sparks's work, we spoke of it as follows, expressing, as 
we believed and believe, the well-determined sense of 
good judges in this country. 

" To judge of the service which Mr. Sparks has rendered the 
country, we must compare the previous accounts of Washington's 
career with that which we now possess. All that is contained in 
Marshall is meagre and incomplete in comparison with the copi- 
ous details and ample ihustrations with Avhich we are at present 
furnished. We have Washington to the life, from boyhood to 
the last hour ; narrating his own career ; explaining himself, the 
formation of his own character; and promulgating his views on 
every question of his day. And these letters are not left unex- 
plained. The editor has gathered collateral aid from every 



67 

quai'ter; and sparingly, yet clearly and admirably, illustrated the 
whole work by researches of the deepest intex'est. As a critic, 
the mind of Mr. Sparks seems to know no bias. He pursues the 
truth, and is enamored of inquiry ; and, where explanation is 
needed he does not rest satisfied, till he has exhausted every 
source of information. 

" The great merit of Mr. Sparks, giving him the first rank 
among the critical students of our history, consists in his candor 
and his completeness. In the selection of documents he appears 
ever to have been guided by the highest reverence for historic 
truth. But more than all, he perceived clearly, that the history 
of our revolution, the life and character and influence of Wash- 
ington, could not be derived from American sources alone ; and 
with a wide grasp, which proves his mind to be enlarged not less 
than accurate, he has sought materials in England and on the 
continent of Europe. He saw clearly the momentous importance 
of the diplomatic connections of our country ; and would not rest 
satisfied, till, at a vast expense of time and fortune, he had culled 
the most interesting memoirs from the archives of London and 
Paris, and, through friends, from the papers of the Spanish Court. 
And he has, in consequence, been able to accomplish a great 
work. He has published such an edition of Washington's works, 
as is never likely to be excelled ; thus winning a claim to regard 
by his zealous care for the remains of our greatest benefactor, 
and permanently connecting himself with a name that will never 
perish. 

" The admirable fund of historic information which Mr. Sparks 
has acquired, and holds in his own mind, ought not to rest unem- 
ployed. It would take an apprenticeship of many years for a 
new critic, — and a critic of equal natural endowments is a rare 
phenomenon, — to attain the position which Mr. Sparks occupies. 
His judgment is disciplined ; his acquisitions, such as to save 
him from imperfect conceptions or undue estimates of the import- 
ance of new documents ; familiar with the relative merits and 
activity of the men of the revolution, we cannot too strongly 
desire, that his mind may continue to be bent upon illustrating the 
history of his country." A^ A. Review, Vol. xlvi. pp. 483, 
484. 

And again, — 

" We dismiss his work with unqualified satisfaction. Its ex- 
tent required a patience of labor, which few men could have 
brought to the task. To these have been added rigid literary as 
well as moral integrity, and that love of his theme which engaged 
him in supplementary and illustrative researches, in this country 
and Europe, of the most important and interesting character. 



68 

Mr. Spai'ks must not look for his reward to pecuniary compensa- 
tion. Notwithstanding Mr. Moore's recent comphmentary re- 
marks on the splendid dowry which literature now brings to 
those who espouse her, we doubt not he has been as well paid for 
the lightest of his own graceful effusions by the Mtecenas of 
Albemarle Street as Mr. Sparks will be for his ten years of un- 
relaxing and conscientious labor. His reward has been already 
in part enjoyed; it must be found in the consciousness of labo- 
riously and worthily performing a noble work ; — in the convic- 
tion that he has contributed to give a wider diffusion, and a more 
abiding permanence, to the fame of Washington ; and that, when- 
ever the authority of the greatest and best of chieftains and 
patriots is appealed to in all coming time, it will be in some asso- 
ciation with his own name and labors." 2^. A. Review, Vol. xlvii. 
p. 381. 

And such, while widely circulated, and subjected to 
criticism far and near, has continued to be the reputa- 
tion of this great work, unquestioned till within about a 
year. In 1847 was published " The Life and Correspond- 
ence of Joseph Reed," by his grandson. It contained seve- 
ral private letters from Washington to Reed, (for some time 
his private secretary,) some of them the same which had 
before been printed by Mr. Sparks. A comparison be- 
tween those letters, as published in the two works respect- 
ively, exhibits some discrepancies. They were com- 
mented upon, last year, in a tone unfriendly to Mr. Sparks, 
in one or more of the New York newspapers ; and catch- 
ing at this from across the water, and echoing it with 
some exaggeration, Lord Mahon has given it form and 
permanency. 

Mr. Sparks understood the difficulties of his undertak- 
ing beforehand, as well as those who criticize him under- 
stand them, after having been enlightened by his exposi- 
tions and experience. In the Preface to the first volume 
published, (the second in the series,) he expressed himself 
as follows. 

" It has been a task of some difficulty to determine what gene- 
ral principles should be adopted, in selecting the parts for publi- 
cation from the whole body of papers left by Washington. In 
the first place, the mass of manuscrijit, which extends to eighty 
volumes, consisting chiefly of letters, is so large as to preclude 
the idea of publishing more than a comparatively small portion. 
Again, from the nature of the correspondence, being mostly offi- 



69 

cial, and many of the letters having been written to different per- 
sons on the same subject, there are necessarily frequent repetitions, 
and numerous particulars constantly intervening, which, though 
essential at the time in the transaction to which they relate, have 
no longer any interest or moment. Of this description are the 
innumerable details incident to the subordinate arrangements of 
an army, such as supplies, provisions, clothing, camp equipage, 
arms, ammunition, and other points of minor consideration, which 
engaged the incessant care of the Commander-in-chief, and en- 
tered largely into his correspondence even with Congress, and 
the highest officers, both civil and military. To print all the 
materials of this kind would not only be useless in itself, but 
would add so much to the size and expense of the work, as at the 
same time to make it cumbersome and unattractive to readers, 
and raise its cost above the means of many individuals, who may 
wish to possess these personal records and authentic memorials 
of the acts, opinions, and character of the Father of his Coun- 
try. 

" Under these circumstances, I have endeavored to pursue such 
a course as would the most etfectually attain the object to be 
desired, in bringing these papers before the public ; namely, to 
exhibit the writings of Washington in a manner that will render 
strict justice to the imperishable name of their author, and con- 
tribute the greatest advantage to his countrymen, both at the 
present time, and in future ages. For this purpose I have laid 
down two rules, which I have labored to follow with as mv;ch 
discrimination as possible ; first, to select such parts as have a 
permanent value, on account of the historical facts which they 
contain, whether in relation to actual events, or to the political 
designs and operations in which Washington was a leading or 
conspicuous agent ; secondly, to comprise such other parts as 
contain the views, opinions, counsels, and reflections of the writer 
on all kinds of topics, showing thereby the structure of his mind, 
its powers and resources, and the strong and varied points of his 
character. Upon this plan, it has been my study to go carefully 
through the manuscripts, without regard to what has heretofore 
been made public, and gather from the whole, and combine into 
one body, the portions most important for their intrinsic value and 
historical characteristics ; so that the work in its complete form, 
may be a depository of all the writings of Washington which it 
is essential to preserve, either as illustrating his political and pri- 
vate life, or the history of his country during the long and bril- 
liant period of his public career. 

" According to this plan, when a letter throughout bears the 
features above described, it will be printed entire, as will, in 



70 

every case, the addresses, speeches, messages, circulars, and other 
state papers, issued by him from time to time. But many of the 
letters, both in the j^ublic and private correspondence, for the 
reasons already assigned, will necessarily be printed with omis- 
sions of unimportant passages, relating chiefly to topics or facts 
evanescent in their nature, and temporary in their design. Spe- 
cial care will be taken, nevertheless, in all such omissions, that 
the sense shall not be marred, nor the meaning of the writer in 
any manner perverted or obscured. Nor is this difficult, because 
the omitted passages usually treat upon separate and distinct 
subjects, and may be removed without injury to the remaining 
portions of the letter. 

" It ought to be premised here, that, in preparing the manu- 
sci'ipts for the press, I have been obliged sometimes to use a lati- 
tude of discretion, rendered unavoidable by the mode in which 
the papers have been preserved. They are uniformly copied 
into volumes, and this task appears to have been performed, 
except in the Revolutionary correspondence, by incompetent or 
very careless transcribers. Gross blunders constantly occur, which 
not unfrequently destroy the sense, and which never could have 
existed in the original drafts. In these cases I have, of course, 
considered it a duty, appertaining to the functions of a faithful 
editor, to hazard such corrections as the construction of the sen- 
tence manifestly warranted, or a cool judgment dictated. On some 
occasions the writer himself, through haste or inadvertence, may 
have follen into an awkward use of Avords, faults of grammar, 
or inaccuracies of style, and when such occur from this source, I 
have equally felt bound to correct them. It would be an act of 
unpardonable injustice to any author, after his death, to bring forth 
compositions, and particularly letters, written Avitli no design to 
their publication, and coinmit them to the press without pre- 
viously subjecting them to a careful revision. This exercise of an 
editor's duty, however, I have thought it allowable to extend 
only to verbal and grammatical mistakes or inaccuracies, main- 
taining a scrupulous caution that the author's meaning and pur- 
pose should thereby in no degree be changed or affected." Wash- 
ington's Writmgs, Yol.ii. Introd. pp. xii.-xv. 

If the correctness of these views taken by Mr. Sparks 
of his editorial duty, and submitted by him to the judg- 
ment of experts at his first publication of two volumes, 
was liable to any doubt, then, when objections were 
almost solicited, was the time for objections to be made. 
Had any error in his plan then been pointed out, the 
exposure of it would have influenced the remainder. But 



71 

no error was pointed out. Approbation was expressed,* and 
silence gave consent, and the plan was thought to be most 
judiciously conceived, and met universal concurrence. 

Has there been a departure in the execution from the 
plan and principles announced ? Lord Mahon, and the 
American journalists whom he has followed, say that 
there has been ; that into Washington's letters Mr. Sparks 
has interpolated matter of his own. We shall see pre- 
sently how that is. 

Lord Mahon has "formed the opinion," and is "bound 
not to conceal" it, "that Mr. Sparks has printed no part 
of the correspondence precisely as Washington left it." 
The deviations must have been of one or more of three 
classes, namely, additions, omissions, or alterations. 

Of additions, Lord Mahon and his American author- 
ities have imagined that they detected one. A passage 
in a letter from Washington to Reed, of March 7, 1776, 
stands in Reed's " Life and Correspondence " as follows. 

" The drift and design are obvious, but is it possible that any 
sensible — but enough." Vol. i. p. 170. 

While Mr. Sparks presents it thus. 

" The drift and design are obvious, but is it possible that any 
sensible nation upon earth can be imposed upon by such a cob- 
web scheme or gauze covering ? But enough." Washington's 
Writings, Vol. iii. p. 310. 

Upon this Lord Mahon makes himself boisterously 
merry. In his exhilaration, he ventures on what is rare in 
his writings, a jest of his own. 

" I know not whether my readers will concur with me in lik- 
ing Washington's own, and, though homespun, excellent cloth, 
much better than the ' cobweb schemes or gauze coverings,' which 
have, it seems, been manufactured in its place." Vol. vi. p. viii. 

Droll, certainly ! And the distinction does honor to 
his Lordship's critical acumen. How clear, (when pointed 
out,) and how ludicrous the contrast between the genuine 
grave rhetoric of Washington and the flimsy suppositi- 
tious texture of Sparks. 

" Demens ! qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen 
" ^re, et cornipedum pulsu simul&rat equorum ! " 

* For our own judgment at the time, see N. A. Review, Vol. xxxix. 
pp. 468-471. 

7 



72 

The flout and the fun have only one flaw. The fault 
is in the finder. The language, so ridiculously unlike 
Washington's, and so presumptuously invented by Mr. 
Sparks for him, is Washington's own. It was not added 
in Mr. Sparks's edition, but, by some accident, it was 
omitted in Mr. Reed's. In both editions it was printed 
from the same original letter. By Mr. Sparks it was 
printed correctly ; by the editor of Reed's " Life and Cor- 
respondence," not so. Lord Mahon, we have no doubt, 
will easily get from that gentleman a confirmation of 
this statement of ours, if he chooses to take the trouble ; 
and he will then suspect himself to be not an infallible 
judge of the warp and woof of Washington's homes- 
pun, or a sufficiently cautious censor of a fellow-freeman 
of the republic of letters. 

As to the charge of additions^ it is clear that Lord 
Mahon will have to try again. So far, Mr. Sparks's 
assertion in his recent pamphlet stands unimpeached, that 
" not a single line, or fragment of a line, ivas intentionally 
added to the original text, throughout the whole twelve 
volumes of the work." * 

Of omissions there may be different kinds : as of whole 
letters ; of portions of a letter, treating topics distinct 
from the rest ; of single words or phrases. 

To complain of the omission of letters, and those in 
great numbers, is to complain that Mr. Sparks did not pro- 
pose a work consisting of forty or fifty volumes instead of 
twelve ; or that he could not command the treasury of 
the nation to defray the cost, instead of having to look 
to the patronage of the trade and of readers. What the 
reading public wanted, and was ready to pay for, was a 
selection. If the number of volumes was not judiciously 
determined, if the selection would have been materially 
better suited to its purpose by being more voluminous, 
let that be shown ; it will be fair matter for censure. 
French readers wanted only six volumes ; and for their 
use Guizot reduced Mr. Sparks's work to that number. 
The Germans craved but two ; and with two, accord- 
ingly, they were accommodated by Von Raumer. The 
question whether, all things considered, the American 

* Ecpli/ to the Strictures, &c. p. 8. 



73 

public would have been better suited with move than 
eleven, we think Mr. Sparks, prima, facie, better qualified 
to decide than Lord Mahon. Still we are open to con- 
viction, and are ready to give our best attention to his 
argument whenever he is ready to make it. 

The collection, however, may be comprehensive enough, 
but not judiciously made. In other words, some letters 
which are omitted m.ay have had a better right to be 
embraced in it than some which have a place. That is 
a very intelligible case, and not improbalale in point of 
fact. We do not remember that, in any instance. Lord 
Mahon or the critics whom he has followed have adopted 
this line of argument, and undertaken to show that the 
collection would have been, on the whole, improved by 
the rejection of this letter and the substitution of that. 
Yet it would in no degree surprise us if, in some instance, 
this should be shown. We should be much more sur- 
prised if the editor's judgment, applied to so many dif- 
ferent comparisons, should in every case prove to be 
unquestionable. 

To argue that the collection ought to have been en- 
larged, or that some letter should have been omitted from 
it in order to find place for some other, is to argue to 
the purpose. But it is not to the purpose to say, simply, 
f Mr. Sparks has seen fit to omit this letter," as if to 
exclude any letter was a thing unfit ; when three letters 
out of four, or seven out of eight, or two out of three, 
or some proportion or other, were necessarily to be 
omitted. 

In respect to the omission of portions of a letter, treat- 
ing some topic distinct from the rest, we have not a word 
to add to the perfectly clear, and, to our minds, perfectly 
satisfactory exposition of Mr. Sparks himself. 

" The propriety of omitting parts of letters, and retaining 
other parts, may, perhaps, at first view, be thought questionable. 
But when it is considered that parts of letters, treating upon 
totally distinct and unconnected topics, are in reality the same 
as so many distinct letters, it is obvious that to omit such parts 
differs in no respect from omitting separate letters. More- 
over, if entire letters had in every instance been printed, it 
would have been necessary to leave out of the work much that 
was valuable and important, which is now included, and fre- 



74 

quently to repeat the same matter, and sometimes in the same 
language. 

" In the correspondence during the Revolution, it often hap- 
pened that several letters were written nearly at the same time 
to different persons ; the President of Congress, the governors 
of States, officers of the army, or other official characters, in 
which not only the same facts were communicated, and the same 
topics discussed, but whole paragraphs were almost literally trans- 
cribed from one letter into others. These repetitions grew out 
of the nature of the business in hand, and could not have been 
avoided without unnecessary circumlocutions and strained at- 
tempts to seek a variety of language for expressing the same 
ideas. As to letters of this description, it was the practice to 
print some one of them entire, and to select from the others such 
parts as were free from repetitions. But in all omissions, whe- 
ther for these reasons or others, whether short or long, special 
care was taken not to break off in the midst of a topic or train of 
thought, and not, by any abrupt transition, to weaken or obscure 
the sense of the author." Reply, pp. 20, 21. 

The remaining case, oi omissions of words and phrases, 
stands on substantially the same principles as that of 
alterations ; so that, in what we have to say of them, it 
will be most convenient to treat the two classes together. 

What are the privileges, and what the obligations of 
an editor of posthumous letters, in respect to such omis- 
sions and alterations ? The question is not without its 
difficulties ; there is something to be said on both sides. 
In discussing it, we desire distinctly to apprise the 
reader beforehand, that we shall take some positions 
which do not at all belong to the defence of Mr. Sparks ; 
ivhich he has 7iot assumed, or had occasion to assume ; 
and which we cannot say that, in any editorial exigency, 
he would approve.* 

* Gray, by his will, left his papers to his friend Mason, who published a 
selection from them, prepared according to his notions of editorial duty. But 
when "he that is first in his own cause seemeth just," sometimes " his neigh- 
bor Cometh and searcheth him." By and by Mitford, the editor of Milton, 
published a larger selection, with a preface, animadverting severely on the 
method of his predecessor, in omitting, transposing, and altering. But what 
does the censor say of his own course ■? This : (Vol. i. Advertisement,) " The 
editor has only further to observe, that he has formed the following selection ac- 
cording to the best of his judgment ; he has made a few omissions when the 
subject turned on mere matters of business, or private and domestic circum- 
stances ; and he has taken the liberty of altering a very few words, which 
occurred in the freedom of the most familiar correspondence ; but it must be 



75 

The great public has a prurient curiosity to see a great 
man in dishabille. If, being a good thinker, he has some- 
times used bad reasonings, — if, being or not being a 
good scholar, he has made some lapses in spelling, 
grammar, rhetoric, or recollection of facts, there is a sort 
of satisfaction to readers in having them exposed, and 
in having opportunity afforded to exercise their own 
critical gifts, and to feel, so far, their own superiority. 
If hasty opinions, alien from the usual habits of thought, 
have somehow been put on record; if some petulant 
expression has been used, out of harmony with the cha- 
racteristic style of comment and intercourse ; if some- 
thing which the man kept to himself, during his life, can 
be got at, now that he is no longer here to protect it, 
there is many a reader who especially rejoices in such 
spoil. 

How far is that taste to be accommodated, by one 
who has an editor's responsibility for a great renown ? 
If a man may reasonably dislike the thought of having 
his dead body exposed to a mob of students on a dis- 
secting table, has he no privileges whatever of exemption 
from a vulgar exposure of his mind ? If he may be 
allowed to have his corporeal carbon and nitrogen quietly 
inurned, according to his own notions of decency and 
taste, is his unclad mind to be at the mercy of any rude 
survivor, who may be inclined to gibbet it by the high- 
way for the inspection of the passers-by ? 

We cannot but think that some consideration is due to 
the known judgment and feelings of him whom we com- 
pel to make a posthumous appearance upon the stage. 
It is no small liberty that we take with a man, when, 
after he has gone beyond the reach of being consulted. 



added that this has not taken phice above three or four times in the whole 
collection of letters, and only in those cases where the original expression 
could not with propriety have been retained." In other words, the tierce 
purist found it impossible to reck his own rede. The rules whicli he was so 
shocked at another's departure from, turned out to be too rigorous for his 
own application ; and, after all, he was fain himself to " tamper with the 
truth of history." "We shall not undertake to defend Mason's freedoms, 
which were utterly unlike the judicious fidelity of Mr. Sparks. But in high 
quarters there has been a favorable opinion of his labors. It was after Mit- 
ford's publication that the Quarterhj Review, (Vol. xv. p. .377,) pronounced 
Mason's to have ''put to shame every subsequent attempt of the same nature." 



76 

or the power of crashing us for our impudence, we take all 
of him that was most his own (including all that he would 
most have cared to keep so,) and share it with the world. 
The freedom ought not to be extended a great way fur- 
ther than is necessary for the public good. And if ever 
there was a man, as to whom more than to all others, 
such terms ought to be kept, that man perhaps was 
Washington. Perfect, punctilious, rigid propriety and 
dignity of public appearance was perhaps more consi- 
dered by him than by any other great man in history. 
Cicero would not have wished to appear to posterity in 
his letters, otherwise than as he does appear. Pliny and 
Walpole, in their correspondence, dressed themselves up 
for posthumous enthronement, like Peruvian Incas. In 
the letters of Dryden and Swift there is a vast deal, and 
in those of Pope not a little, which dying they ought to 
have wished to blot ; but they did not wish to blot it, and 
therefore it is doing them the less wrong to let it stand. 
Cromwell's letters defy the rhetorician's art to bring them 
into any shape ; but they are true and precious illustra- 
tions of the man, nor is there the slightest ground for 
supposing that he would have been disinclined to have 
them used, just as they are, for that purpose. The care- 
less expressions, which very rarely occur in Washington's 
letters, are not illustrations of the man. They are illustra- 
tions of nothing but of what the man carefully and strenu- 
ously intended not to be or do, and of what he uni- 
formly in fact avoided when he voluntarily stepped into 
the public view. An editor of the writings of Adams, Jef- 
ferson, or Madison, would occupy, we think, a different 
position in this respect, from an editor of those of the 
first President. Secure in the consciousness of scholarly 
culture, John Adams would not have cared a groat had 
he known that rhetorical or even grammatical errors of 
his were going to be reprinted to the end of time. With 
Washington it was different. Not only had gravity and 
precision a singular prominence in his estimation of 
character, not only did dignity make in a peculiar man- 
ner his point of honor, but, like most eminent men who 
are not, strictly speaking, scholars, he had a sensitive ten- 
derness on the point of apparent deficiency in that respect. 
So correct were his habits of thought, so complete his 



77 

method, and so clear his perceptions of the meaning of 
words, that few men of his time on the whole wrote bet- 
ter, when he had time to compose with care. He always 
did compose with care, when he was composing for the 
public. So solicitous was he on this head, that, on import- 
ant occasions, he availed himself largely of the criti- 
cisms of others. When writing not for the public, nor with 
time for correction, still the qualities of his mind stamped 
themselves on his language, and it was generally all that 
could be desired. Sometimes, no doubt, it could not fail 
to be otherwise ; and then, if ever, there was a sleeping 
worthy, whom a posthumous exposure of infelicities of the 
kind would have made revisit in complete steel the glimpses 
of the moon, that terrible avenging shade would have 
been Washington's. And its aspect would have been 
more awful than was that of its substance, — though that 
was awful enough, — when Gouverneur Morris, feigning 
to have mistaken him, slapped him on the shoulder. 

But we repeat, that in throwing out some general views 
upon this subject, which strike us as not unworthy of 
consideration, we have gone much further than was at all 
necessary for the defence of Mr. Sparks's work, and much 
beyond any principles of editorship which he has an- 
nounced or applied. Washington's understanding was 
so accurate, and most of what he wrote was so carefully 
considered, that there was very little left by him requir- 
ing different treatment from what any judicious editor of 
posthumous letters left for publication by a thoroughly 
trained writer, would think proper to apply. Those who 
think Mr. Sparks has used too much freedom, of course 
know how the thing could have been better done. How 
then would they have gone to work themselves ? Wash- 
ington, like some great men of letters, as Pope, and like 
many great commanders, as Napoleon and Frederick, 
— did not always spell correctly, either according to the 
fashion of our day, or even according to that of his own. 
Would it have thrown any useful light on Washington's 
character or career, or would it have been in any way 
entertaining or profitable to the reader, to have the press 
follow such inadvertencies, not always uniform, either, 
with each other ? In a letter printed by Mr. Sparks, (vol. 
iii. p. 35,) Washington speaks of " Captain Derby," com- 



78 

mander of the Essex frigate. We knew the fine old gen- 
tleman well, and he always spelt his name with those 
letters. But at the time when Washington wrote of him, 
it was pronounced Darby, and we observe that it is so 
printed in the copy of the same letter in the " American 
Archives," (vol. ii. p. 1707,) which we dare say is a cor- 
rect representation of Washington's original, since his 
orthography would be likely in this case to be guided by 
his ear. But would any thing have been gained to his- 
torical truth, if Mr. Sparks, by letting " Captain Darby " 
stand, had veiled that gallant officer's identity from the 
view of posterity ? If an editor is bound to preserve an 
author's orthography, every new edition of Paradise Lost 
is a new violation of the truth of history on a large scale. 
We will take it for granted that the objector, since he 
does not mean to be consummately absurd, will yield us 
this point ; though in doing so he abandons his own 
chosen ground ; for that Washington wrote a word with 
a certain combination of letters, is for these minute phi- 
losophers an historical fact, and when Mr. Sparks, pro- 
fessing to represent him, uses another combination of 
letters, he " tampers with the truth of history," if their 
doctrine is good. 

A step further brings us to cases of grammar. Suppose 
Washington, or one of his copyists, has written in his 
letter-book, " Greene and Putnam has gone up the river." 
Is it of any use to anybody, to have that peccant singu- 
lar form of the verb perpetuated ? Does the page look 
better ? Is the reader better instructed ? Is Washing- 
ton better understood ? Is the fidelity of history usefully 
subserved ? We wish one who thinks so, would try the 
making of a book on that principle. We fancy that 
booksellers and purchasers, or rather no purchasers, would 
before long impress him with another view of the subject. 
Grammatical errors occur very rarely in any thing written 
by Washington's own hand. Would it have been of any 
sort of benefit to vary his general correctness in this re- 
spect with a hortus siccus of specimens of his occasional 
oversight ? 

" The truth of history," according to Lord Mahon's 
sharp conception of it, is pretty eftectually disposed of 
already. But if violations of it may go thus far, may they 



79 

proceed another step ? May they be pushed an inch into 
the department of rhetoric ? If Washington at Mon- 
mouth swore some Virginia oaths when he met Lee re- 
treating, (which we do not know that he did,) does histori- 
cal integrity require their preservation ? Lord Castlereagh 
was a great man, besides being an English University 
man ; but he is reported to have spoken, in his place in 
parliament, of " the fundamental features on which the 
question hinges," and of " the honorable gentleman on 
the other side, who, crocodile-like, put his hands into his 
breeches pockets and wept." Does Lord Mahon think 
that an editor of Lord Castlereagh's speeches is bound to 
embalm those less select expressions, on pain of being 
charged with tampering with the truth of history ? Wash- 
ington never sinned so far against Quinctilian's rules about 
mixed metaphors, or any metaphors. But does histori- 
cal integi'ity require the preservation of an expression in 
a familiar and confidential letter, so alien from Washing- 
ton's usual style as " a hundred thousand dollars will be 
but a flea-bite " ? Letters are sometimes as extempora- 
neous as speeches. 

The legitimate discretion of an editor is to be used, 
we conceive, in respect to these three classes of pecca- 
dilloes with a freedom, as to each, in the reverse order of 
that in which we have named them. In respect to the 
last class, it appears to us that Mr. Sparks has been, as 
he ought to have been, exceedingly cautious. In fact, in 
the great mass of letters, as we have already said, there 
was not, in any view, occasion or opportunity for changes. 
There was no temptation to make them. In what Wash- 
ington wrote for the public, or in what he wrote with 
care, as he wrote almost every thing, all was in as good 
order as any pedant or pedagogue could wish it. The 
instances which Lord Mahon parades in his Appendix 
are all from eight letters (out of more than twenty-five 
hundred contained in the work) addressed by Washing- 
ton to Joseph Reed, in the last two months of 1775 and 
the first three of 1776. Written with a carelessness alto- 
gether unusual with him, they were evidently of the most 
confidential description. It is pretty clear that he re- 
garded the correspondence in that light. He kept no 
copies of his own letters, and, as the editor of Reed's 



80 

'' Life and Correspondence " informs us (vol. i. p. 163, 
note,) none of Reed's letters previous to March 1776 are 
preserved ; the inference from which must be, either that 
they were destroyed by Washington, or else returned 
to their writer, and by him destroyed.* Our only doubt 
is whether, under these circumstances, Mr. Sparks should 
have given them any place in his collection, though 
they contain so much interesting matter that the induce- 
ment was strong, and the mere reader cannot but be 
thankful for the decision to which he came. Respecting 
them, the editor of Reed's " Life and Correspondence " 
says : — 

" In a letter from Professor Sparks to the author, dated 21st 
February, 1838, he says, ' The letters from Washington to your 
grandfather, in '75 and '76, which you were so kind as to send 
me, and a selection from which I printed, seemed to me the most 
imperfect I had ever seen from his pen. They were evidently 
Avritten in great haste, in perfect confidence, and without any 
thought that they would ever be published. I used more caution 
in selecting from these letters than from any others.' These let- 
ters are now for the first time printed entire." Life and Corres- 
ponde7ice, Vol. i. p. 125. 

If they were to be printed at all, they appear to have 
required some such caution as Mr. Sparks has used. 
The reader does not seem to lose much that is worth de- 
ploring in the omission of the epithets " rascally " and 
" dirty," nor in the metaphors of the " flea-bite," and the 
" lame hand." One diversity of expression however, does 
convey a diversity of sense. The passage which Mr. 
Sparks has printed, " If this has given rise to the jealousy, 
I can only say that I am sorry for it," reads in the Phila- 
delphia copy of the letter of December 15th, 1775, " If 
this has given rise to the jealousy, I cannot say that I am 
sorry for it." On this we wait for further light. There 
has been carelessness somewhere. But we shall not con- 
fidently lay the blame on the editor of Washington's 
Writings, as Lord Mahon has done, till we know what is 



* Washington's scrupulosity in this matter is esjjecially iUustrated by the 
fact of the destruction of his letters to his wife. Only one survives ; that 
printed by Mr. Sparks in Washington's Writings, Vol. iii. p. 2. 



81 

the true reading of the original, to which we have not 
access. One alleged addition of Mr. Sparks to one of 
these letters, which was in fact the gravamen of the 
charge against him, has turned out to be, on the contrary, 
a true copy by him, and an omission by the Philadelphia 
editor. What happened once, may have happened twice, 
though we by no means intend to assume it. We only 
suspend our judgment on the present case, and await more 
proof. The omission in the printed Philadelphia copy 
which occasioned an arraignment of Mr. Sparks on the 
charge of adding, was an accident, — no more. The dif- 
ferent reading of Mr. Sparks in the letter of December 
15th, was an accident, too, if it turns out to be his error, 
and an accident of less importance. 

Washington's table at Cambridge in 1775 and 1776 
was not surrounded by gray-beards. He, the oldest of 
the group, was forty-three years old. Harrison and Mifflin 
had not reached half the age of man. Palfrey was thirty- 
four, and no Heraclitus at that; Moylan and Baylor 
were at an age for nonsense. With all the gravity which 
the general communicated to the intercourse of his board, 
it is not likely that it uniformly witnessed all and more 
than all the solemnity of fourscore. And if the com- 
mander of the right wing was some times there irreverently 
called " Old Put," the designation might undeliberately, 
and withal blamelessly, slip into Washington's private 
correspondence with Reed, who had just left him, though 
it is about as impossible as any thing else that can be 
imagined, that the writer, being what he was, should have 
been willing to serve it up to the public eye. Further ; 
Reed calls General Putnam Old Put in his letter to Wash- 
ington of March 15th,* and in Washington's letter to 
Reed of April 1st " Old Put " is guarded within quota- 
tion marks. Do they indicate a reference in the latter 
letter to the nick-name given in the former ? If so, the 
force of the expression would lose its point and fitness 
when Washington's letter is printed apart from Reed's.f 

* Reed's Life and Correspondence, Vol. i. p. 172. 

t Lord Malion thinks it worthy of mention (vol. vi. p. 57, note,) that in 
Mr. Peabody's Life of Putnam it is not recorded — as it is by Gordon — that 
that officer had kept a tavern. If his Lordship thinks himself defrauded of 
any thing by that omission, we will indemnify him by the information that 



82 

But we do not intend to vouch for the infallibility of each 
and every of Mr. Sparks's decisions of this nature. Per- 
haps he would not be disposed to stand by every one of 
them himself. Single little matters must be summarily 
disposed of. De minimis non curatur, is a general rule, 
and though Mr. Sparks's diligence forms an eminent 
exception to it, it was impossible for an editor of thou- 
sands of octavo pages, an investigator of tens of thou- 
sands of pages of manuscript, to pause till he had ob- 
tained absolute conviction on the respective claims of 
« General Putnam," and " Old Put." Still we should fail 
in candor did we not own that, had we been in Mr. Sparks's 
place, we should have been strongly tempted, at least, to 
win Lord Mahon's approval by holding on, as with hooks 
of steel, to " Old Put " and the « flea-bite." We should 
have been sensible to a natural — it could scarcely be 
called a malicious pleasure, — in showing that Washing- 
ton, statuesque as he almost always was, and as he 
always meant to be, had after all in his grand heart a 
secret chord of sympathy with human levities. Mr. 
Sparks's austerer judgment, more penetrated with the 
spirit of his master, determined otherwise, and though 
we can scarcely approve, we shall not undertake magisteri- 
ally to blame. 

Lord Mahon rebukes Mr. Sparks (vol. vi. p. 122,) for 
the omission of the following sentence from a letter of 
Washington to Reed, of February 10th, 1776. 

" Notwithstanding all the public virtue which is ascribed to 
these people, there is no nation under the sun, that I ever came 
across, which pays greater adoration to money than they do." 

Where does his Lordship get that sentence, which Mr. 
Sparks ought to have inserted as Washington's ? The 
censor does not stand rectus in curia. It is not for him to 
be loud-tongued against changes and omissions, when he 
corrects them after this fashion. He professes to copy 

Greene, his supposed sot, began life as an anchor-smith; that Knox, the 
chief artillery officer, served his apprenticeship with a book-binder ; and that 
Stai-k, Prescott, Heath, and others, were farmers who held the plough. If 
men so trained could dispose of British and German regiments as they did, 
possibly their more elaborate initiation into the science of arms miglit have 
more speedily cleared their country of its invaders. 



OO 

the omitted sentence from Reed's " Life and Correspond- 
ence." We turn to the letter in that work (vol. i. p. 157,) 
and we find the word " pay " where Lord Mahon has 
written " which pays." 

Again, on the same page. Lord Mahon quotes the 
following as from Washington's letter to Reed of No- 
vember 28th, 1775. 

" Such stock-jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain 
advantages of one kind or another in this great change of mili- 
tary management, I never saw before, and pray God I may never 
be witness to again." 

In the last clause, for " and pray God," Mr. Sparks 
(vol. iii. p. 178) has " and pray God's mercy." Till fur- 
ther informed, we shall think it probable that this is an 
accidental omission m the Philadelphia edition, such as 
we pointed out in a former case,* rather than an addition 
by Mr. Sparks, to which there was no apparent tempta- 
tion. As far as to the last clause, Mr. Sparks and the ed- 
itor of Reed's " Life and Correspondence " (vol. i. p. 130,) 
print the sentence precisely alike ; and they both have the 
word " arrangement," where Lord Mahon has " manage- 
ment." We are bound to suppose that their united testi- 
mony is to be received, as Lord Mahon has no know- 
ledge on the subject from inspection of the original. 

In these cases, to use his own language, applied to Mr. 
Sparks, his Lordship has " altered, and, as he thinks, cor- 
rected and embellished." He should not have ventured 
on such liberties, in the same paragraph in which he re- 
proves them. Will he say they are errors of a copyist or 
of the press ? Very well. The accident may reveal to 
him an element of fair criticism of the works of others. 
And certainly Mr. Sparks never, through any oversight, 
or error of copyist or compositor, has printed an altera- 
tion, of a kind to do injustice to character, like that of 
Lord Mahon in his erroneous quotation from La Fayette 
in relation to General Greene. 

Though our remarks have been drawn out far beyond 
what we expected, we have by no means exhausted the 
subject, nor shall we pretend to do so. There remain, 

^ See above, p. 194. 



84 

however, two or three pohits whicli we ought not to pass 
wholly without notice, and we shall be»t present them in 
Mr. Sparks's own words. 

" In regard to the text, also, it is proper liere to repeat what 
has been said in another place, that frequent embarrassments have 
occurred. It was Washington's custom, in all his letters of im- 
jjortance, first to write drafts, which he transcribed. In making 
the transcripts he sometimes deviated from the drafts, omitting, 
inserting, and altering parts of sentences ; nor did he always cor- 
rect the drafts, so as to make them accord with the letters as sent 
to his correspondents. These imperfect drafts were laid aside, 
and from time to time copied by an amanuensis into the letter- 
books. [The amanuenses were sometimes the rude and igno- 
rant overseers of his plantations.] Hence the drafts, as now re- 
corded, do not in all cases agree precisely with the originals that 
Avere sent away. My researches have brought under my inspec- 
tion many of these original letters. Regarding them as contain- 
ing the genuine text, I have preferred it to that in the letter- 
books, and it has accordingly been adopted wherever it could be 
done. 

" But the discrepancies are of little moment, relating to the 
style, and not to the substance. For the most part, I have been 
obliged to rely on the letter-books ; and, for the reasons here 
mentioned, it is probable that the printed text may not in every 
j)articular be the same as in the originals, that is, the corrected 
copies, which were sent to his correspondents." Reply, pp. 23, 24. 

In Reed's " Life and Correspondence," (vol. ii. p. 41,) 
is published a letter of Washington, dated December 12th, 
1778, also contained in the " Writings of Washington," 
(vol. vi. p. 130.) In the latter copy as compared with the 
former, there appear some variations ; as " I am at a loss 
to discover," for " is beyond the reach of my conception ; " 
" our posts," f >x " the posts ; " " be so much out," for " miss 
it so much ; ' and seven or eight others of the same im- 
portance, or rather unimportance. But their importance 
or unimportance is not now our point. On a reexamina- 
tion it appears, that Mr. Sparks's copy is an exact transcript 
from Washington's letter from which he printed, except 
in two particulars ; and these are " logged houses," in the 
letter-book, for " log houses ; " and " lest disaster might 
happen," for " lest a disaster might happen ; " — which 
amounts to this, that the letter sent to Reed had some 
verbal variations from the copy kept by Washington, 
which was Mr. Sparks's only guide. Again, in Marshall's 



85 

'• Lilc of Washingtoii," (vol. v. p. 15,) is a letter oi Octo- 
ber 10th; 1784, to Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, also 
printed in " Washington's Writings,", (vol. ix. p. 58,) in 
which a comparison of the two copies discloses a few va- 
rious readings of no more consequence ; as " stumbling- 
blocks," for " impediments ; " and " connections in a com- 
mercial way," for " commercial connections." On re- 
currence to the letter-book at Washington, it proves to 
be truly represented, word for word, by Mr. Sparks's copy. 
Having stated these facts, and another set of them, of the 
same description, occurring in a letter to Richard Henry 
Lee, of December 14th, 1784, Mr. Sparks proceeds as fol- 
lows : 

'' These specimens will serve to show the state of the text in ;i 
large portion of Washington's letters, as they now exist in manu- 
script, particularly those written at Mount Vernon, and others of 
a private nature written elsewhere. The originals sent to his 
correspondents seldom agree throughout in phraseology with tlie 
copies retained on record. Moreover, these copies are constantly 
marred by the blunders or mistakes of illiterate or careless trans- 
cribers. For the most part there was no resource for the editor 
but to follow the letter-books." Reply, p. 30. 

" Another example, still more striking, may be mentioned. 
AVashington kept a copy of his official correspondence during his 
military services in the last French war before the Revolution, 
written on sheets loosely stitched together. Some twenty or thirty 
years afterwards, he revised this manuscript, making numerous 
erasures, interlineations, and corrections in almost every letter. 
This corrected copy was then transcribed into bound volumes 
under his own direction. Which is now the genuine text ? Which 
would Washington liimself have printed ? 

" The one in the letter-books was adopted, because it seemed 
ob\ious, that, after the pains he had taken to prepare it, he in- 
tended that copy for permanent preservation and use. It would 
be easy to cavil here, and say that we have not the precise lan- 
guage employed by Washington to convey his thoughts at the 
time the letters were written, but a garbled substitute introduced 
at a much later day. Yet this was an act of his own, and cer- 
tainly no editor would be justified in disregarding it. In these 
letters, therefore, the same kind of discrepancies will necessarily 
appear, as in the cases alluded to above, between the printed text 
and that of the originals sent out to his correspondents." Ibid. 
pp. 30, 31. 

The amended form in which Washington had his letters 
copied into books, was not that which they bore when 



86 

transmitted to the persons addressed. Mr Sparks printed 
them from the manuscript books. Has some one " tam- 
pered with the truth of history " to bring them into the 
shape'which they bear on the printed page ? If so, who 
was it ? 

But we have detained our readers long enough with 
comments of detail, which were not, however, to be 
avoided, if we undertook to treat this important work. 
With great respect for Lord Mahon's character and labors, 
but with greater respect for the truth of history and for 
the^principles of a generous criticism, we have felt bound 
to present some of his errors to his notice. Some of 
them are material. Others are of small account ; but they 
throw light on that credulity and haste which have be- 
trayed him into those of the graver sort. So far as we 
have exposed any, to his own conviction, we rely upon 
his upright nature to correct them for those future edi- 
tions in which we believe his history is destined to live 
and " gather all its fame." 



Page 44, line 2. For " St. Leger," read " the Cedars." 
Page 66, line 30. For " Mr. Sparlcs's work," read " five volumes of 
Mr. Sparks's work." 



LBJcDS 



•T M 



